LOQICAL 



WILL SEE 





Class ^„.B 12.17-3 

Book_ .__._'B_3.3 

CofsyrightK" 



COPyRIGHT DEPOSIT. 




THE AUTHOR AT THE AGE OF 30. 



THE LOGICAL 




WILL SEE 

THE 

Other Side of Christs Life 
AND Teachings 



COMPLETED AND PUBLISHED IN THE 124TH YEAR OF THE 

AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE OF THE UNITED 

STATES, BY THE AUTHOR 

DR. J. BARR, 

DOCTOR Cr GCDOLOGY, ThiCOLCGy 

AND LOGICIAN ' ' i\ V'\ % 



COPYRIGHT APPLIED FOR 

BY 

DR. J. BARR, CHICAGO, ILL. 

1900 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 

Two Copies Received 

APR 15 1904 

Oopyrlfirht Entry 

OA^. ID -ic^ a 

CLASS CO -JCXc. N< 



No. 



r 

COPY 






INTRODUCTION. 

First. They who caDnot reason, are 
imbeciles. 

Second. They who can reason, and 
will not, are bigots. 

Third. They who can reason, and 
dare not, are cowards. 

Fourth. They who can reason, and 
dare to reason, are those who move in 
the front ranks of Progi*ession. 

I am aware that many persons, who 
give my book a slight examination, will 
say: "That anyone who would publish a 
work of this kind, were likely to be one 
of an immoral character, or one who be 



IV 



came prejudiced to theology, and took 
this course to justify himself." 

I have a commendation from twelve 
good citizens that I trust will clear the 
minds of my readers on this point, and 
if it were not for this, I would not offer 
this commend, of which I will give a 
correct copy, to- wit: 

Fremont, Iowa, Jan. 30, 1887. 
To all to whom these present may come, 

Greeting: 

This is to certify, that we, the 
undersigned, have been acquainted with 
the bearer, Jehu Barr, who has been a 
citizen of this place fourteen years, and 
we know him to be a person of good 



moral character, of honesty and integrity, 
and temperate in his habits of life. 

F. M. Phillips, farmer. 

D. H. DiNSMOKE, farmer. 

Philip Ehkenhard, furniture dealer. 

S. H. HiNZMAN, carpenter and builder. 

H. Akerman, stock dealer. 

J. S. McClain, hardware merchant. 

B. W. Parker, marble dealer. 

W. O. McFall, physician and surgeon. 
S. R. Canon, postmaster. 

C. Bond, M. D. 

P. Akerman, stock dealer. 

Fremont, Iowa, Jan. 31, 1887. 
To whom it may concern: 

I hereby certify that I am well and 
personally acquainted with all the persons 



VI 



whose names are affixed to the within 
recommendations, and say, that the names 
were written by each one for himself, 
and take pleasure in recommending Mr. 
Barr as a gentleman of integrity and 
good habits. 

In witness whereof 1 have set my 
hand, and attached my notarial seal. 
M. W. Byram, 
Notary Public and Druggist. 

I offer an apology to my readers for 
treating my subject in a manner so plain, 
and somewhat unpolished, but in order to 
deal with it as Jesus did, I could not do 
otherwise. He speaks of unbelievers 
without any regard to their feelings, and 
Christians, when they refer to Liberals, 



Vll 



do so in the harshest terms they can 
conceive. Is it not just to employ the 
same means to defend ourselves? I hope 
my readers vrill lay aside prejudice, as I 
am aware of the fact that a great many 
have never learned but one side of the 
subject, not even allowing themselves to 
give the question any consideration from 
this standpoint. We have a right to 
know whether the fundamental principles 
presented by Jesus and his agents are 
matters of truth or fiction, and this we 
cannot know until we examine the testi- 
mony on both sides. Liberal investiga- 
tors believe that the welfare of this 
great Republic depends in no small de- 
gree upon our not allowing the Christian 



Vlll 



religion to interfere with its national 
affairs, and that Christianity has no more 
right to urge its claims on the people 
of this Republic than any other religion; 
as, for instance, Mohammedanism, or 
those classed under the general term 
of Paganism, and as we Liberals deem 
it our duty, as well as our privilege, 
to call attention to the insignificance of 
Christianity, and the injustice of its 
claims, I have decided to treat my sub- 
ject in the manner above indicated. 

I shall not attempt to attack any 
moral precept in the pretended Holy 
book, but I shall attack the immoral 
with such argument that the "Logical 
Eye" will see the truth. I have studied 



IX 



the God idea so thoroughly that I under- 
stand theology in all its details, and find 
that the idea or belief in a God orig- 
inated in ignorant heathenism, and savage 
tribes and nations. This is a truth that 
cannot be successfully denied. I have 
been for thirty years in the study and 
research of Theology and Godology and 
hope my readers will not think I write 
with any intention of boasting whatever. 
I understand my subject thoroughly, and 
invite my readers to give their careful 
and unbias attention. I have no other 
motive in oiffering this book than to let 
others see that there are two sides to 
theology, and would advise my readers 
to examine the scriptures to see that 



there is sufficient evideDce to warrant my 
publication. I admit that I have had 
to make some very forcible arguments 
in order to bring out the facts, but 
with a good intent, and can say that 
the cloud of mysterious theology has all 
passed from my mind; and the darkness 
of a pending death, with that terrible 
thought, that by chance I was not one 
of the elect of God, and that I might 
not succeed in working out a conditional 
salvation for a positive condemnation, but 
it is all clear to my mind now, and no 
dread of death. I know of nothing to 
induce me to return back to that belief 
which clouded my thoughts in early life. 
I am reconciled, and can die in peace 



XI 



with the principles and nature of the 
Universe, and if you will go through 
this work you will learn who was the 
real father of Jesus. 

Dr. J. Barr. 



INDEX 



Chapter I. 
Resolved^ That the Christian God and 
His Scriptural Representatives Im- 
pose upon Morality, Truth and 

Justice H? 

Chapter II. 

The Transgression 24 

Chapter III. 

The Acts of Noah 36 

Chapter IV. 

The Acts of Abraham 42 

Chapter V. 

The Acts of Lot 62 

Chapter VI. 
The Acts of Isaac and Jacob 69 



XIV 

Chapter VII. 

The Acts of Moses 72 

Chapter VIII. 

The Acts of King David 91 

Part II — Chapter I. 
What I Offer in place of Christianity 100 

Chapter II. 

The Lineage and Character of Jesus. 115 

Chapter III. 

The Acts of John the Baptist 123 

Chapter IV. 

Boyhood of the Pretended Messiah . . . 146 

Chapter V. 

Miracles 152 

Chapter VI. 
Jesus' Promises 188 



XV 

Chapter VII. 
The Resurrection 222 

Chapter VIII. 
Endless Punishment 231 

Chapter IX. 

Christian Redemption 236 

Chapter X. 
The Christian God 2U 

Chapter XI. 
Immortality 258 

Chapter XII. 
Conclusion 284 

Appendix 289 



XVI 



Logical Deliberation is the True 

Motto for All Men. 
A S a Doctor of Godology and Theol- 
ogy I offer the remedy of pure 
logic for the hampered and tampered 
intellect by godology and theology. The 
doses in this book are, first the introduc- 
tion, then the succeeding chapters, to be 
taken with a little cold water as an em- 
blem of pure logical deliberation, not as 
Jesus did the wine, as an emblem of in- 
nocent blood. In cases that have not 
been so badly tampered, one reading will 
cure. Some cases may require three 
readings. If this does not cure I pro- 
nounce it an incurable case. 



CHAPTER I. 
Resolved: That the Christian God 

AND His Scriptural Representatives 

Impose Upon Morality, Truth and 

Justice. 
TN order to prove this proposition, I 

shall refer to the beginning of the ac- 
count of Christianity, or of its Jewish 
origin, which is recorded in Genesis, 
Chap. 1, where we read that this God 
made man in his own image: "In the 
image of God created he him, male and 
female created he them." Now, if the 
human race is in the image of that God, 
it proves him to be a hermaphrodite, 
and it is not known, whether it is a 



18 THE LOGICAL EYE 

male or a female God, therefore, we 
have a perfect right to consider the 
Christian God a feminine as well as a 
masculine Deity, in accordance with the 
description given in Genesis, Ch. 1: 27. 
This is about the first appearance of 
him or her (the God who is shown to 
be a farce and a fraud), and in accord- 
ance with the above statement, we are 
justified in considering the Deity in ques- 
tion a female as well as a male, as it 
represents the image of both sexes of 
creation. So we may as well say, in 
speaking of the Trinity: ^'God the 
Mother, God the Son, and God the Holy 
Ghost," and I think it would not be 
doing more than justice to this triune 



WILL SEE 19 

hermaphrodite being to sing the doxol- 
ogy one-half the time that way. The 
above statement furthermore proves and 
leaves no room for quibble, that Jesus 
had a half heavenly father, and half 
heavenly mother, and as the virgin was 
also his mother, it follows that he had a 
mother and a half, and only half a 
father. Yet Jesus never mentioned the 
astonishing fact, though he must certainly 
have been aware of it, as he professed 
so much knowledge of his celestial par- 
entage. If he did not know that his 
heavenly parent was a hermaphrodite, he 
had not read or heard the account con- 
tained in Genesis, Ch. 1; probably he 
thought if he did not say anything 



20 THE LOGICAL EYE 

about it, it would not be found out, and 
the fact would escape public attention. 
Such concealment on his part, would cer- 
tainly warrant the charge of fraud, but 
we Liberals believe in getting at the 
bottom of facts; we propose to know 
the whole truth as it is in this Christ 
Jesus. 

Now, this God, after it created in 
its own image male and female, told 
them "to be fruitful and multiply, and 
replenish the earth," but did not put a 
curse on the mother in doing so, which 
statement in the first chapter does not 
agree with the one made to Mother Eve 
in the second chapter. Again in the 
twenty-ninth verse of the first chapter, 



WILL SEE 21 

God said: ^'Behold I give you every 
herb bearing seed, which is upon the 
face of all the earth, and every tree in 
thee which is the fruit of a tree yield- 
ing seed: to you it shall be for meat." 
Now, you see there is no forbidden 
fruit mentioned in that story, but this 
unchangeable God did change its mind 
and have the story rewritten, and relates 
it in an altogether diflferent manner, as 
recorded in the second chapter, as the 
reader will find. The second narrative 
is a one - man business. The garden 
of Eden is created as a truck-patch and 
the man who is placed there is instruct- 
ed to trim and keep it in -good condi- 
tion, and informed that he is permitted 



22 THE L GIOAL EYE 

to eat of every tree that the garden 
contains, save one, which is just a little 
too good for man's use. The Logical 
Eye can see that God had changed his 
mind in regard to allowing man to eat 
of every tree that beareth seed, and 
fruit, as is stated in Genesis, Chap. 1: 
29. But what kind of a tree was this 
of which man was forbidden to eat? 

We are told ''that it was the tree 
of knowledge of good and evil." Now, 
the ignorance of our first parents (as 
Christianity claims they were) during 
their residence in the Garden of Eden 
must have been extreme, as they were 
not even aware that they were in a con- 
dition of absolute nudity. The Biblical 



WILL SEE 23 

narrative expressly states: **They were 
naked, and were not ashamed." What a 
state of holiness ! What strange ideas 
of purity must have been entertained by 
this Deity? But as soon as they ate 
of the forbidden fruit they realized their 
naked condition and tried to cover and 
conceal themselves. This was the first 
step toward civilization of which the 
narrative affords us any account, and in 
order that this step should be taken, it 
was necessary to violate this God's com- 
mand. This fact affords sufficient evi- 
dence of the unju.st character of the God 
in question, as the Loo^ical Eye will 
see. 



24 THE LOGICAL EYE 

CHAPTER 11. 

THE TRANSGRESSION. 

A GAIN, admitting the claim made by 
all Christians that this God is endowed 
with the attribute of foreknowledge, was 
he not guilty of a great act of injustice 
in placing that ignorant pair in the gar- 
den, knowing they would inevitably yield 
to the temptation, and then, when they 
did yield, pronounce upon them a curse 
which should affect the welfare of untold 
millions, involving them in a common 
ruin. I cannot believe or entertain the 
slightest respect for such a God any 
more than I can for any heathen Deity. 
Again, it is evident that this God told 



WILL SEE 25 

falsely about the tree of knowledge. 
He said: "In the day thou shalt eat 
thereof thou shalt surely die." We 
find Adam lived nine hundred and thirty 
years; this does not seem much like 
dying in the day of his disobedience. 
Satan told the truth instead of this God, 
for he said unto Eye, "ye shall not surely 
die, for God doth know that in the day 
ye eat thereof your eyes shall be 
opened, and ye shall be as gods, know- 
ing good and evil." It happened just 
as Satan said, instead of being in accord- 
ance with God's word; they did not die, 
and their eyes were opened and they saw 
their nakedness, and God acknowledged 
that he had spoken falsely, and that 



26 TEE L aiCAL EYE 

Satan had told the truth, as you will see 
in the twenty-second verse of the third 
chapter of Genesis: "And the Lord 
God said: "Behold the man has become 
as one of us, knowing good and evil." 
Does this look like dying? Certainly 
not; but the Christian quibbles around 
the truth, and says: "It means a death 
in trespass and sin," therefore this can- 
not be but an assumption on the part 
of the Christian ; besides is it possible 
that to become as wise as God, knowing 
good from evil, is a sin? If so, you 
make your God the greatest sinner of 
all, as you claim he is the wisest God 
of all gods, because he was wise before 
Adam, and knew good from evil before 



WILL SEE 27 

Adam did, therefore, I repeat, that the 
account proved, without a single sentence 
to the contrary, that the eating of the 
forbidden fruit produced the knowledge 
of good and evil, instead of a death of 
any kind, and it also proved God to be 
a greater fraud than Satan in this case. 
God still persisted in trying to mislead 
and deceive Adam after he and his wife 
had donned their fig-leaf aprons (which 
was the best they could do under the 
circumstances), for he came into the gar- 
den and called unto Adam, "Where art 
thou ?" as if that all-seeing eye did not 
see where they were without asking so 
foolish a question, and Adam said: "I 
heard thy voice in the garden, and I 



28 THE L GICAL EYE 

was afraid because I was naked, and I 
hid myself," and God said: "Who told 
thee thou was't naked ?'** as if, when 
Adam saw his nakedness he would not 
know without being told; and God said 
to Adam: "Has't thou eaten of the 
tree whereof I commanded thee thou 
should not eat?" Now, God asking this 
question plainly shows that he knew 
they would discover their nakedness in- 
stead of dying. Why was God not hon- 
est and fair with the poor ignorant 
dupes in the garden, as he created them? 
Why did he not tell them that the pen- 
alty which would follow the violation of 
his command, concerning the tree, would 
be the discovery of their condition, which 



WILL SEE 29 

would entail shame and modification and 
the enlightment of their intellect? Then 
in the event of their disobedience the 
consequence would have been a verifica- 
tion of their maker's statements, and God 
would not have stood convicted of false- 
hood and deception. Now, if the eating 
of the fruit that brought man to a 
consciousness of his ignorant condition in 
Eden insulted this God to such a degree 
that nothing could appease his wrath 
'till he could see innocent blood shed on 
the cross, I certainly pity such a* God, 
for he that would accept such an atone- 
ment is tenfold meaner, more debased 
and void of principle than the man who 
broke his command, beside the command 



30 THE LOGICAL EYE 

that God gave Adam does not involve in 
its violation an act of wrong-doing. It 
should be on the man's part a positive 
duty, not only to break, but to treat 
with contempt such an order as a prohi- 
bition of the knowledge of good and 
evil. I cannot believe that there is an 
intelligent Christian man or woman, who 
will give this matter a careful and un- 
prejudiced consideration, who will not 
feel convinced that there is something 
wrong in the origin of his or her faith. 
Now, ' if Adam had not eaten of that 
fruit, what would have been the result? 
If the Eden story has any truth in it, 
Adam and Eve would have been the only 
two persons on earth, and if they were 



WILL SEE 31 

created immortal (to never die), they 
would still be iu the Garden of Eden. 
It certainly was not the intention of God 
to people the earth with the expectation 
of keeping the entire race in this garden; 
besides, according to the account given, 
it was necessary for Adam and Eve to 
violate his commands in order to give 
God a chance to curse the woman in 
child-bearing, and had they not been 
guilty of this disobedience they would 
have remained the only human occupants 
of the garden until the present time. 

The planting of a comparatively 
small garden-patch in an obscure corner 
of Asia would scarcely have justified this 
pretended Omnipotence in creating a 



32 THE LOGICAL EYE 

planet the size of our globe, simply for 
the accommodation of two persons. If 
our first parents had not violated the 
divine command, everything could not 
have conduced to the glory of God, so 
he could be "All in all" and Christ 
crowned "King of kings" and "Lord of 
lords," for the whole vStory from Genesis 
to revelations clearly indicates that the 
aim of the Christian God-head is to 
bring about their own glory regardless of 
justice, truth and morality toward the 
human race, as the Logical Eye will 
see. In short, he aspires to be the 
great bigot and tyrant king of the uni- 
verse. 

Now, we see in the sixth chapter of 



WILL SEE 33 

Genesis, that the Almighty repented that 
he had made man after pronouncing all 
his work good. We can see how very 
defective and short-sighted must have 
been the judgment of that Deity, who is 
declared to be omniscent, that he should 
create a man and woman who did not 
meet his expectations, excludes all the 
foreknowledge of this hermaphrodite 
christian God, who, upon realizing that 
he had committed an error, was grieved 
to his heart that he had made man, 
as you will find recorded in the same 
chapter previously referred to; so we in- 
fer that he has a heart, as man 
whom he made in his own image, 
and the organs of which he is possessed 



34 THE L GICAL EYE 

are counterparts of his own. May we 
not justly conclude that the diseases to 
which these organs are subject are also 
of Divine origin? And among these 
may possibly be included heart disease 
and insanity, in fact, the scriptural 
description of God shows him to be 
thoroughly anthropomorphous throughout; 
not only does he possess and manifest 
human emotions, such as love, hate, 
grief, fear, vengeance, anger and repent- 
ance, but he is represented as exercising 
the functions of the human body, as for 
instance, smelling, because we are inform- 
ed that the elews were commanded to 
burn the carcasses of animals that he 
might inhale the offensive smoke, yet the 



WILL SEE 35 

Christians claim their God is a super- 
natural being. How absurd the claim, 
when the whole description of him 
proves him not only natural, but of a 
very low type of nature, fully as low as 
can be found among the heathen Gods, 
not one of whom is guilty of meaner or 
more immoral and unjust deeds than the 
christian God, and this can be sustained 
by the pretended word of God. This 
shows that this God was originated by 
the mind of man, as the Logical Eye 
will see. 



36 THE LOGICAL EYE 



CHAPTER III. 

THE ACTS OF NOAH. 

TN regard to God's repentence, if he 
really repented that he had called into 
existence the human race, and determined 
that he would destroy them by deluge 
from off the face of the earth, why did 
he not adhere to his resolution instead of 
allowing such a character as Noah to in- 
fluence him, whose motives were selfish, 
to save his own scalp and those of his 
own family? And if his infinite wisdom 
could find no better man than Noah 
eventually proved to be, he had much 
better have allowed him to drown with 
the rest of his fellow creatures. This 



WILL SEE 37 

instance affords another illustration of the 
strange quality of Divine foreknowledge, 
or would, in fact, reflect discredit upon 
every ordinary judgment; for no sooner 
had the flood abated and Noah had made 
his exit upon terra firma than he pro- 
ceeded to plant a vineyard, and as soon 
as he could grow grapes and convert 
them into wine he drank himself in a 
condition which is better understood as 
being dead drimk^ and when under the 
influence of wine he was discovered in 
an obscene condition, and one would sup- 
pose that this spectacle would have 
'caused Jehovah to repent again, and be 
grieved to his heart that he had saved 
Noah from the deluge, but when Noah 



38 THE L GICAL EYE 

sobered up, and was informed what had 
occurred during the period of his ineb- 
riety, and that his son Ham had not 
only witnessed the degradation of his 
father but reported it to his brothers, 
he became exceedingly angry and invoked 
bitter maledictions upon Ham's posterity, 
declaring that he should be doomed to a 
state of servitude to the descendants of 
Shem and Japhet. There is nothing in 
the whole account to show that Ham, or 
his son, Canaan, did anything to injure 
the drunken old reprobate, and as Noah 
had disgraced and exposed himself in 
his tent in an obscene and degraded con- 
dition, it was he, and he alone, who 
should have involved the Divine displeas- 



WILL SEE 39 

ure, also who should have suffered from 
God's curse and not the innocent and 
accidental witness of the shameful occur- 
rence described. This is another instance 
which shows very conclusively that Noah 
and his God were guiliy of a fraudulent 
act against innocence in the persons of 
Ham and his unfortunate son. Again 
the account of the flood indicates very 
defective judgment and perverted moral 
sense, and a strange lack of ethical dis- 
crimination on the part of a Deity, 
which modern theology has invested with 
so many superhuman attributes. In the 
first place, he did not improve the 
human race through the instrumentality 
of the deluge; the account goes on to 



40 THE LOGICAL EYE 

state that fhe world became just as 
wicked as ever, and this personal God, 
who knew everything, certainly should 
have known that seed saved from the 
antediluvian race would inevitably produce 
the same result, and it is a fact too patent 
to any ordinary observer, that this God 
is convicted of the most profound ignor- 
ance. This may be plain talk to my 
readers, but I cannot refrain from using 
the same; the truth need not be afraid 
to employ plain terms. Again, the 
story of the flood affords inferentially 
still another illustration of God's injustice 
to man; thus, if this Deity ever aimed 
to give the world a plan of salvation 
through a Redeemer, he ought to have 



WILL SEE 41 

manifested himself in the flesh before the 
flood and allowed the antediluvians to re- 
pent of their wickedness and be saved, 
as those who are wicked and required to 
repent since the deluge, instead of going 
into a wholesale drowning business, but I 
am compelled to believe that the salva- 
tion of man, through Christ, had never 
occurred to him. The story shows that 
the flood did not improve in the least 
the moral condition of the race, and it 
soon became as wigked as ever. 



42 TEE L GICAL EYE 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE ACTS OF ABRAHAM. 

QHORTLY after this God chanced upon 
Abraham, and he thought probably he 
had made a decided hit this time (which 
is called the third age of the world), so 
he proceeded to inform Abraham of the 
great things he contemplated doing for 
him, but we will find he made another 
great mistake in the character of Abra- 
ham. We are told that Abraham de- 
clared that his God had made him great 
promises and he believed God, and it 
was imputed unto him for righteousness. 
I must say I pity the belief, faith and 
righteousness of Abraham, but bear with 



WILL SEE 43 

me and hear my reason. Now, if 
Abraham had held a personal conversa- 
tion with his God in regard to a land 
that was to be given to him and to his 
seed forever, Abraham would not have 
feared or doubted anything, but we find 
that he did both fear and doubt, for 
when he went to that land he found 
famine and had to look to some other 
land for something to eat, which proves 
that Abraham spoke falsely in regard to 
God's promises when he stated that God 
had instructed him to take up his abode 
in a certain locality, because the Al- 
mighty would not have sent him to a 
land of famine to better his condition. 
I am inclined to think he emigrated on 



44 THE LOGICAL EYE 

his own account; again, if he had been 
granted a private interview with this 
Deity in whom he professed such implicit 
faith, he would not have been afraid to 
have trusted his life in this God's care 
when he was on his way to Egypt to 
get corn, instead of inducing his wife to 
tell Pharaoh a lie, representing herself as 
Abraham's sister in order to save his 
life; but if Abraham had been as repre- 
sented, the special protege of the Al- 
mighty, it would only have been neces- 
sary to commit himself to his guardian- 
ship, instead of making false and mis- 
leading statements concerning his wife, 
for there is not one particle of evidence 
which can be brought to establish this 



WILL SEE 45 

alleged relationship, and if you examine 
Genesis, Chap. 11: 29, 30, 31, you will 
find I am correct in this. 

Next, read the statements of Jo- 
sephus, and you will learn that Abraham 
and Sarah were uncle and niece, fpr it 
is shown that Abraham and his brother 
Nahor took wives of their brother 
Haran's daughters, and you will also 
find in Josephus that Iscah and Sarah 
are the same persons, also is the 
daughter of Haran, Abraham's brother; 
therefore, Lot is Haran's son, which 
makes Lot and Sarah brother and sister, 
and Abraham their uncle. When Abra- 
ham tried to make it appear the second 
time, when he went to the king of 



46 THE L GIGA L EYE 

Gerar, that his wife was his sister, it 
was a falsehood made out of whole 
cloth, and this is not Abraham's only 
act of degrading conduct. If this (xod, 
in whom he trusted, had made him such 
great promises concerning a son who 
should be born to him, in whose seed 
all the nations of the earth should be 
blest, why did not Abraham patiently 
wait the fulfillment of those promises, 
instead of establishing an adulterous rela- 
tion with his servant-girl Hagar, for the 
purpose of trying to fulfill the promise 
himself? And why did not his God bring 
him to task for having committed this 
crime, and in so doing manifesting con- 
tempt for his God's promises? I tell you 



WILL SEE 47 

there is something wrong in this narra- 
tive of Abraham and his God. It shows 
that one is as great a fraud as the 
other, being already proven beyond a 
doubt that Sarah is her husband's niece, 
therefore, it is so much the worse for 
Abraham, as well as his God. Could 
not this God manage to find a more 
decent and moral man as the progenetor 
for a chosen people than one who would 
contract an incestuous marriage? 

1 have heard clergymen try to prove 
Sarah to be the sister of Abraham in 
order to clear the latter's character of 
the charge of falsehood, but if this rela- 
tionship of brother and sister existed, 
the marriage in the light of modern 



48 THE LOGICAL EYE 

civilization and according to our standard 
of morality is decidedly unlawful; not 
only so, but it is a direct violation of 
his own marriage laws as promulgated 
by Moses, who is asserted as being this 
God's law-giver. If God aimed to pre- 
sent Abraham to the world as a model 
of righteousness for all time, he should 
have given him a marriage law, disallow- 
ing any marriage any nearer than second 
cousins given at a later period, which 
unhesitatingly condemned the marriage of 
sister or niece. This is one of the rea- 
sons why he can be regarded as a very 
changeable Being. His moral codes vary 
to such an extent that what he endorses 
as moral, at one age of the world, be- 



WILL SEE 49 

comes very bad morals in another. As 
to Abraham, I am strongly inclined to 
believe that he misrepresented the truth 
when he said to Abimelech, King of 
Gerar, saying: "She is my father's 
daughter, but not my mother's daughter," 
which could not be only false, from the 
foregoing fact that she is his brother's 
daughter instead of his father's daughter; 
however, giving Abraham the benefit of 
every doubt and placing the most favorable 
construction on the record of his life is 
evidence enough to convict him of fraud, 
and the God whom he worshipped would 
have protected and befriended him under 
all circumstances, provided such a being 
actually existed, and Abraham would have 



50 THE L GICAL EYE 

had no excuse for resorting to deception 
and falsehood. 

It is a test case and is very, appar- 
ent that Abraham had no faith in such 
a God, otherwise he would have prayed 
to hina, instead of resorting to deception 
for protection of his life when he 
arrived in Egypt. This seems to be 
very small faith, so very sQiall as the 
grain of mustard seed that Jesus spoke 
of, which is too small to be imputed un- 
to him for righteousness sake. I do 
not like the deception with which the 
records of Christianity abound. Their 
God was leaving the line of veracity 
when he condescended to reconcile him- 
self to Abraham's falsehoods, and also 



WILL SEE 51 

when he put a lying spirit in the mouth 
of his prophet, and in another place 
where we are informed he brought strong 
delusions on certain individuals that they 
might believe a lie that they might be 
condemned. This is nice work, indeed, to 
engage the attention of this God, which 
is not in harmony with the doctrine of 
foreordination, who claims to be possess- 
ed of goodness, justice, mercy and truth. 



52 THE L GICAL EYE 



CHAPTER V. 

THE ACTS OF LOT. 

T^HE next we will investigate will be 
the character of Lot, Abraham's 
partner (at one time). It seems from 
this account that this sanguinary Hebrew 
God was again desirous of committing a 
wholesale slaughter similar to that of the 
deluge, but he wished to proceed with 
great caution lest some, whom he con- 
sidered righteous, might suffer in the de- 
struction which he proposed to bring up- 
on the wicked city of Sodom, and he 
finally concluded to consult Abraham up- 
on the subject. The result of this con- 
sultation was Abraham's intercession in 



WILL SEE 53 

behalf of the city, and his request was: 
If there were fifty righteous persons residing 
therein the fearful doom naight be averted. 
The Lord agreed to this, and finally 
Abraham jewed him down to ten, he 
consenting to spare the city for the sake 
of even that very limited number of 
righteous souls; but this small number 
could not be found, only Lot and his 
family, and the town had to burn- 
When we find how righteous Lot proved 
to be, we must justly pronounce him a 
very bad Lot indeed, and we cannot 
suppress our doubts as to the Lord's 
judgment and skill at character reading, 
as displayed in this instance. One can- 
not help thinking that if there were any 



54 THE LOGICAL EYE 

among the residents of Sodom who mer- 
ited so fearful a punishment, Lot should 
not have been made an exception, for he 
proved to be too mean and degraded to 
live. A God who was endowed with 
the gift of fore- knowledge knew what 
would occur in Lot's family, and if he 
did know and still determined to save 
Lot, it must have been according to his 
purpose that so disgusting and immoral 
a circumstance should take place; and 
after it did transpire, we are not informed 
that this God ever reprimanded Lot, 
to say nothing of punishing him for so 
atrocious a crime, but Lot's .poor wife, 
for the very natural, thoughtless and in- 
nocent act of looking back at the doomed 



WILL SEE 55 

city, hallowed by old associations, and 
which contained her home and household 
treasures, was changed into a pillar of 
salt. It would appear in the light of 
later events that if their God had spared 
Mrs. Lot's life the horrible crime of in- 
cest committed by Lot and his daughters 
would have been averted. The result of 
this disgraceful affair was the perpetua- 
tion of Lot's posterity, as to one of 
Lot's daughters was born Moab, who 
was the lineal founder of the Moabites, 
of which family came Ruth. You will 
find that Boaz married Ruth, that Boaz 
and Ruth were great grandparents of 
David, the man after God's own heart, 
tro whom Christianity claims to trace 



56 TEE L O GICAL EYE 

the lineage of Jesus, it being ordained 
that he should come through the line of 
David. There is no question but King 
David is of the tribe of Judah on one 
side of his lineage, which adds the more 
degraded nature of David's parentage. 
To satisfy my readers, I call attention to 
the thirty-eighth chapter of Genesis, 
which is too obscene a transaction to re- 
peat, in regard to the character of 
Judah, the son of Jacob, the father of 
the tribe of Judah, from whom the kings 
of Israel must be selected, and that 
Judah and Tamar are the ancestors of 
David; see Matthew, Chap. 1: 3. But if 
it can be- shown that this Jesus, the son 
of Mary, the virgin, did not come 



WTLL SEE 57 

through the line of David, which I again 
refer to in Part. 2, Chap. 2, in this 
work, it leaves the ordination of this 
God unfilled at the present. It is 
rather a poor pedigree to be chqsen for 
a Messiah, for it can be shown conclu- 
sively to anyone desirous of investigating 
the matter, that his ancestry runs back 
to Ahab, the harlot, who lived on the 
walls of Jericho, and it does seem that 
this God when engaged in the merciless 
slaughter of Sodom and Jericho, purpose- 
ly made choice of the most disreputable 
families through whom to manifest him- 
self in the flesh. If he did not intend to 
accept those immoral acts indicated it 
would have been followed by speedy repri- 



58 THE L GidAL E YE 

mand, and rained fire and brimstone upon 
Lot and his daughters and utterly destroy 
them as he did the people of Sodom, 
and not permit them to rear their ille- 
gitimate offspring 'till they did become 
amalgamated with the seed of Abraham, 
in whom it is said: ''All nations of the 
earth should be blessed" — that which has 
been proven to be a greater curse to 
the earth than a blessing. 



WILL SEE 59 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE ACTS OF ISAAC AND JACOB. 

T^HERE is but one condemnation from 
a moral stand-point in the life of 
Isaac, which is a repetition of his father, 
Abraham's duplicity concerning his wife 
Rebekah, whom he represented as being 
his sister to the king of Philistine, with 
whom they were temporarily sojourning 
on account of famine in their own land. 
The evidence is clear and decided that 
he married his first cousin, being Isaac's 
father's brother's daughter. The circum- 
stance evinces the same cowardice and re- 
luctance to trust his life in the car© of 
that Deity whom he worshiped. This 



t50 THE LOGICAL EYE 

occurrence convicts Isaac of fraud and 
deception. But the general history of 
this man shows him to have been more 
of a dupe than a knave, more sinned 
against than sinning. He was rather a 
credulous, unsophisticated mortal, and 
when he became aged and infirm, an 
easy prey to the deception of his schem- 
ing wife and second son, Jacob, who, 
taking advantage of his weakness and 
credulity, aided and abetted by their God, 
succeeded in so completely deceiving the 
poor old gentleman that Esau was 
cheated out of the paternal blessing to 
which at that time so much importance 
was attached by the Jewish nation. 
This was done by taking advantage of 



WILL SEE 61 

Isaac's blindness, as we are expressly 
informed that his sight was so dim he 
could not see Jacob when he came in 
with the goat soup, but he felt of him 
as he could not identify him by sight. 
Kebekah, his mother, had Jake fixed up 
all right with kid-skins stretched on his 
hands and neck, so as to represent his 
hairy brother Esau. So Isaac had to 
submit, saying: ''The voice is Jacob's 
voice, but the hands are the hands of 
Esau." 

Now, if this God desired that Jacob 
should be his special patriarch, he should 
have had him born first in order to pre- 
vent the necessity of having any person 
or persons resort to fraud and deception. 



62 THE LOGICAL EYE 

and then Jacob would not have been 
under the necessity of telling three posi- 
tive falsehoods to his father, for he ques- 
tioned him three times as to whether in- 
deed he was his very son, Esau, and 
each time Jacob answered in the affirma- 
tive. When he had prepared his kid- 
soup he took it to his father, who said: 
'*Who art thou?" and Jacob said: "I 
am thy first born" (falsehood No. 1). 
Then his father asked him "how he had 
arranged to procure the venison so 
quickly? Jacob answered: ''The Lord 
thy God brought it to me" (falsehood 
No. 2). The narrative states explicitly 
that his mother, Rebekah, sent him to 
get the kid, and he then told his father 



WILL SEE 63 

his God brought him a deer. Again 
Isaac asked if he were his very son 
Esau, and Jacob answered, ''I am" 
(falsehood No. 3). This is the record 
of the artifice by which Jacob became 
the father of the twelve tribes of Israel. 
Does this not appear like a very impro- 
per and ungodly method for a god to 
pursue in transacting business? This 
proves this God to be a respector of 
persons as the scriptures distinctly say: 
^* Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I 
hated," and yet we are told that this 
God is not a respecter of persons. If 
he aimed to give Jacob the precedence, 
he certainly knew that this could only 
be accomplished by the former lying the 



64 THE L GICAL EYE 

latter out of his rights, and violating the 
very custom which the God himself had 
in other cases endorsed. Now, this plain- 
ly shows that this God and his agents 
are supporters of fraud, and, in fact, 
stand convicted on the plain testimony of 
the Bible itself of fraudulent dealing in 
every case of any importance which I 
have so far investigated. We will now 
proceed to examine more fully into the 
life and character of Jacob, revealing 
some circumstances connected with his 
later life. We find the first business 
transaction, after leaving his father's 
home, was to go to his Uncle Laban 
and bargain for a wife. This is the first 
instance of wife purchase on record, and 



WILL SEE 65 

he got more than he bargained for, as 
his uncle would not permit him to 
haye the one he first bargained for with- 
out taking his other daughter also, for 
which he agreed to pay the same amount 
in labor that he did for the former, but 
it did not seem to injure Jake's feelings 
as he readily agreed to take the two 
sisters. You see he was a polygamist 
all the way through. Not being satis- 
fied with having established bigamy, he 
went still further and committed adultery 
with his wife's hand- maids, by whom 
were born to him several sons, being a 
part of the twelve tribes of Israel. 
Jacob was a good example for Mormon- 
ism by his polygamist example, and how 



66 THE LOGICAL EYE 

can our Christian friends condemn Mor- 
monism at the same time without con- 
demning Jacob and his God? But I 
suppose Christians will say: ''That this 
occurred before the Christian dispensa- 
tion;" but they must admit that their 
God existed (if he lived at all) before 
the Christian era, and if he is an un- 
changeable being and endorsed polygamy 
in the Jewish dispensation, he and his 
son Jesus ought to necessarily permit it 
to exist in the kingdom of Christ, but 
we Liberals do not believe it right to 
exist in any nation, kingdom or dispensa- 
tion. I suppose this God had to have 
twelve sons born to Jacob and it did 
not matter how, provided he got them, 



WILL SEE 67 

whether they were the offspring of poly- 
gamy or adultery. The twelve tribes of 
Israel had to be founded and this was 
the way it was done, and we cannot go 
back on the records. Is this not a 
fraudulent imposition upon truth, morality 
and justice? Christianity claims that it 
has and is civilizing the world, but nay; 
verily the world is civilizing Christianity, 
so that it is beginning to be ashamed of 
the deeds of its founders as in principle 
to true civilization. Every good principle 
which Christianity claims to have and 
practice was borrowed from the world. 
Even the Golden rule was not original 
with Jesus. It was taught by others 
hundred of years before he was born, 



68 THE LOGICAL EYE 

outside the Jewish ecoDomy. It was 
simply adopted and reinculcated, or en- 
dorsed by Jesusj and anyone who will 
not admit this fact is either not well in- 
formed upon the subject or unwilling to 
accept the truth. Upon a careful con- 
sideration of the events in the lives of 
Jacob and his descendants, we are forced 
to the conclusion that he received but 
slight recompense for his duplicity after 
all. His God got him down in Egypt 
with all his children and allowed them 
to become slaves. Now, was not that a 
fraud upon justice? This God certainly 
knew all this would follow their immi- 
gration to Egypt, and if this God had 
promised Abraham the land of Canaan 



WILL SEE 69 

for his posterity forever, why did he not 
see to it that they were provided with food 
and not be compelled to leave their own 
land on account of famine? Why were 
they forced to make that journey to Egypt, 
which resulted so disastrously, and finally 
led to the slaughter of so many innocent 
children, put to death in obedience to 
the mandate of the cruel Pharaoh, at the 
time when Moses was so miraculously^ 
saved in his little bulrush canoe and 
picked up by the king's daughter? All 
this does not look like keeping his 
promise to Abraham, and be it remem- 
bered that the children of Israel had not 
committed any acts which would agitate 
the wrath of their God up to the tima 



70 THE L GICAL EYE 

of the slaughter of those inDOcent child- 
ren at the hands of Pharaoh, and yet he 
permitted it to be done. Had these 
people never been conapelled to leave 
Canaan, God would have been saved the 
trouble of bringing them back. Moses 
would have been saved that hard and 
tedious task of relieving his brethren of 
that bondage. Had not this God com- 
pelled his people to pass through this or- 
deal of slavery, he would not have been 
under the necessity of hardening Pha- 
raoh's heart so frequently in order to 
show forth his power in bringing his 
children out of Egypt, as the account 
tells us: "That when he hardened the 
heart of Pharaoh he would send plague 



WILL SEE 71 

upon the people of Egypt in order to 
soften Pharaoh's heart again, that he 
might let the people go," and the last 
time that this fraudulent God played 
upon justice he hardened Pharaoh's heart. 
He made it so hard that nothing would 
soften it but a wholesale slaughter of 
every Egyptian mother's first-born. This 
must appear to be the most barbarous 
account of any of the heathen Deities 
known on record; for instance, slaying 
the children of the innocent Egyptian 
who had no control of the government 
of Pharaoh in holding this people in 
bondage. 



72 THE L GICAL EYE 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE ACTS OF MOSES. 

N TOW, we will examine into the char- 
acter of Moses and learn of his fraud- 
ulent acts upon truth and justice. One of 
the first acts of Moses, after he had left 
the house of Pharaoh, was the slaying 
of a task-master who was an overseer 
over those children in bondage, which 
was a great mistake of Moses and an 
unjustifiable murder. It certainly did 
not benefit his brethren in the least, as 
it is reasonable to suppose that another 
slave-driver was appointed to take the 
place thus vacated, and in all probability 
a more severe one, while the brick-mak- 



WILL SEE 73 

ing business went on just the same, and 
Moses had to skip from the country to 
save his scalp. We cannot help thinking 
but that this God should have given 
Moses one of the ten commandments, 
viz: '*Thou shalt not kill," before he 
left Pharaoh's house, but it probably did 
not occur to his God, so Moses left for 
the land of Midian and married one of 
Jethro's daughters, passes his time pleas- 
antly no doubt, leaving his brethren in 
the brick yards 'till such time as in his 
opinion the excitement concerning his 
career had died out, when he concluded 
he would sneak back and see if he could 
not find some way of accomplishing his 
God's will in the release of the enslaved. 



74 THE LOGICAL EYE 

He states in the narrative with the 
authorship of which he is accredited, 
that the Lord had advised him that they 
were all dead who had sought his life in 
consequence of the murder of the task- 
master. So you see that the Lord 
helped the murderer out of the scrape, 
and he is, and should, according to justice, 
be held responsible with Moses for the 
murder, as he permitted the children of 
Israel to fall into bondage making it in- 
ducive to Moses committing the crime. 
But as Moses wanted to be a ruler over 
his brethren (as is plainly seen), he suc- 
ceeded finally in effecting their release. 
It is probable that he had his plan laid 
before he returned and that is why he 



WILL SEE 75 

wanted them to borrow gold and silver 
from the Egyptians, which was virtually 
the same as stealing as they never ex- 
pected or intended to return their valu- 
ables, which we now call jewelry, and is 
called so because those Jews stole those 
goods and have always been a specialty 
in their dealings to the present day. 
Moses intended to build a tabernacle (at 
least his God did) from the fact that 
this God told Moses to tell his people 
to borrow the goods from the Egyptians. 
This shows a great injustice in this God, 
in spoiling the Egyptians of their gold 
and silver, and not rewarding the Israel- 
ites (if he intended to reward them) from 
Pharaoh's treasury who was rewarded by 



76 TEE L GICAL EYE 

the labor of the Israelites. Moses knew 
he would need all the gold he could get 
(and I suppose his God also), to finish 
the tabernacle according to the design he 
had in contemplation. It was subse- 
quently built and completed as he evi- 
dently planned, and he certainly did not 
find the gold in the wilderness. It 
occurs to us that instead of ordering his 
chosen people to steal, and that by 
wholesale, he should have given them be- 
fore starting another of the ten com- 
mandments, viz: "Thou shalt not steal," 
instead of waiting 'till they reached Mt. 
Sinai, besides had they not been instruct- 
ed to steal that gold they would have 
had none for Aaron, out of which to 



WILL SEE 77 

construct the calf which made so much 
trouble. Thus, Moses aud his God 
would have been spared the provocation 
of wrath and anger and neither would 
the children of Israel have suffered from 
the results of that wrath, as the story 
tells us. The deliverance of his breth- 
ren from slavery, which Moses after so 
much trouble effected, so far from bene- 
fitting them, seems to have plunged 
them in deeper difficulty, as he only led 
them into the wilderness and kept them 
there until all of those except two per- 
sons, Caleb and Joshua, who left Egypt, 
were alive at the time they entered the 
land of Canaan. Meanwhile he kept 
them half starved for want of food and 



78 THE L GICAL EYE 

water, and if they ventured to make the 
slightest complaint Moses and his God 
would be angry and claim they had no 
right to murmur. But a starving mul- 
titude were justified even in rebelling 
against such tyranny. Moses says "his 
God refused to allow him to go into the 
land of Canaan, but it might be inferred 
from the tone of the story and all the 
circumstances that he was afraid to act 
as leader of the Israelites against the 
Canaanites, and that was the reason why 
Moses turned the job over to Joshua and 
skipped out again. There cannot be a 
particle of truth in the story of Moses 
going upon the mountain to die. For 
it says in Deut. Chap. 3 4: 7, he was one 



WILL SEE 79 

huDdred and twenty years old, yet his 
sight was not dim nor his natural force 
abated. Now, a man in such a condition, 
hale and hearty, could not go upon a 
mountain to die, because he could not die 
with all his physical strength unless some 
one should kill him, and his God was 
the only one present at the time of his 
death and funeral according to the 
record. So it must be that his God 
did the killing himself, and that would be 
the only truth in the case provided 
Moses died at that time. So you see 
this God committed a murder and buried 
his victim and '*no one knoweth to this 
day where the tomb of Moses is." Ac- 
cording to the scriptures, however, there 



80 THE LOGICAL EYE 

is another possible sequel to this, which 
is as follows: By the time Moses had 
dragged his brethren around in the wil- 
derness for the space of forty years they 
began to get tired of him. Many times 
during their long and tedious sojourn in 
this wilderness they were on the point 
of rebelling against his authority, and on 
one or more occasions rebellion had 
actually broken out, so it was evident 
they were tired of their autocratic leader 
and he was equally weary of quelling 
disturbances and straightening matters out, 
so under the pretense of going up on 
the mountain to die, he went over the 
mountain to his family in the land of 
Midian, and when he died his wife and 



WILL SEE 81 

friends did not report the account of 
Moses' funeral to his brethren, and it is 
no wonder that the scriptures report to us 
that to this day "no one knoweth where 
the tomb of *Moses is;" but the record 
shows that Moses' wife, the Midianite, 
remained in the land of Midian with her 
father, Jethro, during Moses' sojourn 
in the wilderness. As to the ten com- 
mandments which it is alleged Moses re- 
ceived direct at the hand of his God on 
the summit of Mt. Sinai during the cele- 
brated forty days interview with his 
Deity, it seems singular that these com- 
mandments could not have been given to 
Moses without taking him up into the 
mountain and keeping him there forty 



82 THE LOGICAL EYE 

days and nights, while his God wrote 
them with his fingers on a table of 
stone. If his God did write those com- 
mandments, it was not necessary for 
Moses to have been present as a super- 
visor and keep him from his brethren, 
which led to the manufacturing of the 
golden calf. The truth of the whole 
is too apparent that Moses went up on 
the mountain and done his own stone- 
quarrying, then came down and palmed 
off the job on his brethren as the work 
of his God, which shows ^rmore of Moses' 
deception in his leadership. The Om- 
niscence which could evoke a universe 
from chaos and get it ail in good work- 
ing order in the short period of six days 



TF/ZZ SEE 83 

could have scarcely required forty days 
to instruct his chosen commander on the 
principles of government and given a few 
lessons in architecture and upholstery. 
You will recollect that no inconsiderable 
portion of the forty days was spent in 
receiving directions concerning the build- 
ing and furnishing of the tabernacle, as 
Moses pretended to claim. In the mean- 
time, during the unnecessary absence of 
Moses (the appointed leader), the people 
naturally drifted into a state of mutiny 
and idolatry, which consisted of worship- 
ing the golden calf, and when the God 
looked down off of the mountain and saw 
the calf he called Moses attention to the 
fact of their idolatrous worship and ex- 



84 THE L GICAL EYE 

pressed his terrible indignation and wrath 
to the utter distruction of his people, 
but Moses succeeded in abating the wrath 
of his God by reminding him of the 
fact that if he destroyed them it would 
reflect upon the character of him and his 
God to the great injustice of bringing 
them out of Egypt and not permitting 
them to enter the land of Canaan accord- 
ing to this God's promise. But no 
sooner had Moses quieted the wrath of 
his God and descended from the moun- 
tain, and saw the calf himself, than his 
wrath was kindled to as high a pitch as 
that of his God, and in the terrible ex- 
citement of Moses' wrath he threw the 
tables of stone upon the ground unthink- 



WILL SEE 85 

ingly and broke them, thus destroying 
the work of his God which consisted of 
the ten commandments. He was com- 
pelled to ascend the mountain again and 
ask his God to make another set of tab- 
lets of stooe. It is reasonable to sup- 
pose that he wrote them himself as he did 
the first ones. I can imagine how 
sneaky Moses looked when he approached 
his God on his s^econd mission of stone- 
quarrying (that is if there were a God 
up there), and presented those broken 
stones caused by Moses' wrath when he 
saw his brethren worshiping the calf. 
Before his second ascension with the 
broken tablets and not consulting his 
God, he took the golden calf, laid it on 



86 THE LOGICAL EYE 

the ground, bounced upon it, stamped it 
all to pieces with his feet, burnt the 
pieces of gold into ashes (but chemistry 
teaches that gold will not burn into 
ashes) and threw those ashes into the 
water and bittered the water, which was 
a penance for the worshiping of the 
gold in the shape of a calf, which gold 
they stole from the Egyptians according 
to the instructions of their God. Does 
not this appear to us as a heathen 
mythology of the very lowest type? We 
find heathen gods always have their own 
way of doing business, whether it is 
agreeable with morality, truth and justice 
or not. So it appears in like manner 
with the heathen God of Israel and his 



WILL SEE 87 

agents and priests. There is another 
instance which we desire to refer to be- 
fore concluding this biography of Moses. 
There are many points to which it would 
be interesting to refer to would space 
permit. It is quite clear that the mo- 
tive which prompted Pharaoh to start in 
pursuit of the children of Israel, after 
having consented to their departure, was 
the desire to recover the stolen property 
which they were taking with them. 
Pharaoh simply wished to bring them to 
justice for attempting to steal under pre- 
tense of borrowing, and in Pharaoh's 
doing that it was only carrying out what 
we would do in the same case should it 
occur in this, out* pretended Christian 



88 TEE LOGICAL EYE 

civilization. As to going through the 
Red sea d/ry shod^ it is too much like 
the fish story of Jonah to be believed; 
it is more probable he passed through 
that narrow space of forty miles which 
lay between the Mediterraceaii and Red 
sea. It would not have been out of 
the way to any great extent to have 
gone that way. Had the Suez canal 
been constructed, which connects those 
two seas, at the time of Moses' travel 
from Egypt, he could easily have 
crossed on a bridge and saved his God 
from separating and freezing the water, 
as it is said he did in the case of the 
Red sea. This miraculous passage 
through the Red sea is in harmony with 



WILL SEE 89 

all other heathen mythologies. They are 
the natural outgrowth of ignorance and 
superstition, and there is no doubt but 
that the account above referred to forms 
a part of the fabulous Jewish traditions; 
however, we are in possession of but one 
side of the story of Moses, and though 
even the most favorable one condemns 
him and his God, his record would ap- 
pear more blackened could we have the 
accounts as might be given by those 
whom Moses claimed to be the enemies 
to him and his God, as the Logical 
Eye will see. For instance, that of 
Korah, Abram and Dathan, who rebelled 
against the authority of Moses. It is 
not reasonable to suppose that those 



90 THE LOGICAL EYE 

parties had no reasonable grounds for 
this rebellion, from the fact that those 
parties had all opportunity to know of 
the tyrannical ruling of Moses toward 
his brethren. Moses well knew that this 
people had, to a great extent, lost confi- 
dence in him, and he became weary, and 
no doubt perplexed at the responsibility 
resting upon him and concluded to pass 
out quietly from over them as a ruler 
and live a retired life with his family in 
the land of Midian. This terminates the 
career of Moses. 



WILL SEE 91 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE ACTS OF KING DAVID. 

T^HK next character that I will call 
your attention to is Dayid, the man 
after this God's own heart. The descrip- 
tion given of him will fully show 
the character of him and his God to be 
treacherous to truth, morality and jus- 
tice. Chastity is one of the virtues which 
this God pretends to teach, but he 
allowed David to violate the moral virtues 
of chastity by permitting him to commit 
adultery with Uriah's wife; and through 
his God's assistance David murdered Uriah 
to get him out of the way so he could 
have his wife in peace. Why did not this 



92 THE L GICAL EYE 

God protect Uriah when David had 
him put in front of the battle, as he 
protected Daniel in the lions' den, and 
give David to understand that he could 
not thus victimize an innocent and faith- 
ful old soldier? As the God permitted the 
slaughter of Uriah, we are justified in hold- 
ing him fully responsible with David in the 
murder of his innocent neighbor. He and 
his God should have examined the ten 
commandments given by this God, and 
carefully observed those which say, '*Thou 
shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife,'' "Thou 
shalt not commit adultery," "Thou shalt 
not kill." This shows how the God 
and his God-men fail to practice, in 
many cases, the principles of morality, 



WILL SEE 93 

truth and justice. In this case all the 
punishment which God inflicted on the old 
reprobate was to cause the death of an 
innocent child, the result of this adulter- 
ous union. As soon as the child was 
dead David arose from his mourning in 
sack-cloth and ashes, washed himself, and 
praised his God for his goodness (I sup- 
pose he thought he had received special 
marks of his divine favor in the removal 
of Uriah and the death of the child). I 
have been confronted by ministers of 
Christ's gospel and advocates of David's 
God, who claim to justify David by say- 
ing that this God did reprimand David 
for the deed by sending his prophet to 
him and telling him he had done wrong, 



94 THE L GICAL EYE 

after the deed was committed. I answer 
by asking : Why didn't God send his 
prophet or pretended Holy Spirit to 
David in time to avert David's actions? 
As is claimed he foreknew all things, 
he knew the very instant when the 
thought entered the heart of David to 
commit this pernicious crime. This cir- 
cumstance suffices to convict both David 
and his God equally of a gross injus- 
tice, as the Logical Eye will see. We 
may suppose the reason that this God 
promised a messiah through David was 
because he resembled his God in character 
and disposition, but the God who could 
not find for the progenitor of his prom- 
ised messiah a more decent man than 



WILL SEE 95 

David, should be pitied, especially when 
we learn upon investigation that David's 
pedigree runs back direct to Boaz, and 
from Boaz to the offspring of Lot and 
his daughters, also to Ahab, the harlot 
on the walls of Jericho, and he also 
being of the tribe of Judah; Genesis, 
chapter thirty-eight, please examine. I 
have referred to it in another part of 
this work. After a long life spent in 
fornication, polygamy, etc.. King David, 
suffering the natural effect of his excesses, 
found himself exhausted, debilitated and 
at the point of death. In this emergency 
his friends, knowing his character and 
inclinations, and thinking to rekindle the 
almost expiring spark of life in the bosom 



96 TEE LOGICAL EYE 

of the sensual old man, selected the fairest 
specimen of virginal womanhood to be 
found in all Israel and brought her to 
share the couch of the dying monarch, 
to rest in his bosom ; but the decay of 
old age could not be restored, even the 
blandishments of youth, beauty and inno- 
cence all failed, and the king must die. 
Can civilization and morality conceive of 
a more contemptible, disgusting, fraudu- 
lent character than this man after God's 
own heart? Yet he pretended to be a 
just and good man. Worse than Brigham 
Young in this respect, because Brigham 
did not make such arrogant pretension to 
God-like virtue ; nor did his friends in 
his dying moments adopt the same rem- 



WILL SEE 97 

edy to restore him to vigor and manhood 
— as David in his last extremity. David's 
case stands unparalleled in the annals of 
history. It seems strange that any person 
endowed with even a rudimentary moral 
sense can entertain any respect for such 
a character or Deity as he is supposed to 
resemble, or, in fact, how he can be in- 
spired with any sentiment for them, but 
profound contempt and loathing. They 
stand branded as contemptible frauds. As 
God is represented by Christians in this 
age to be possessed of justice, chastity 
and good morals, why did he not then 
conduct matters with more regard to 
decency and respectability? Then, when 
he condescended to ''manifest himself in 



98 J HE L GICAL EYE 

the flesh," he would have been able to 
boast of a respectable pedigree. It is bad 
enough for an ordinary mortal to conae 
from a disreputable ancestral line, but 
when a God confers such an honor (?) 
upon humanity as to '* manifest himself 
in the flesh," and he selects David, 
through whom he is to make his appear- 
ance, whose character and antecedents are 
dishonorable (as shown by the record), 
this God's choice lies open to criticism. 
Yet Christians actually have the unblush- 
ing effrontry to impose such a Deity and 
representatives of him upon the residents 
of a civilized country in this enlightened 
day and time, under the penalty of 
eternal damnation. Language fails to ex- 



WILL SEE 99 

press the enormity of such insolence on 
the part of Christian bigots, who claim 
the right to express their views on this 
subject. I have also taken the same lib- 
erty to express my views for your care- 
ful consideration. 



LdFC. 



100 THE L GIOAL EYE 

PART II. 

CHAPTER I. 

WHAT I OFFER IN PLACE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

1. Educatioi], instead of revelation. 

2. Science, instead of superstition. 

3. The study, of eternal principles and 
causes of the universe, instead of Bibles. 

4. Industr}^, instead of prayer. 

5. To do right for right's sake, in- 
stead of fear of an endless punishment. 

6. Justice and inercy, instead of a 
barbarous, vicarious atonement. 

7. Knowledge, instead of the en- 
thralldom of mythical theology. 

8. Just and civil laws, instead of 
mysterious laws of God. 



WILL SEE 101 

9. Truth, morality and justice, in- 
stead of faith to worship the unknowable. 
Also, as in the language of Ingersoll : 

10. '^To love justice, to long for the 
right. 

11. ''To love mercy, to pity the suf- 
fering. 

12. "To assist the weak, to forget 
wrongs, and remember benefits. 

13. "To love the truth. 

14. "To be sincere. 

15. "To utter honest words. 

16. "To love liberty. 

17. "To wage relentless war against 
slavery in all its forms. 

18. "To love wife and child and 
friend. 



102 THE LOGICAL EYE 

19. "To make a happy home. 

20. "To love the beautiful in art 
and nature. 

21. "To cultivate the mind. 

22. "To be familiar with the mighty 
thoughts that genius has expressed — the 
noble deeds of all the world. 

23. "To cultivate courage and cheer- 
fulness. 

24. "To make others happy. 

25. "To fill life with the splendor 
of generous acts, the warmth of loving 
words. 

26. "To discard error. 

27. "To destroy prejudice. 

28. "To receive new truths with 



WILL SEE 103 

29. "To cultivate hope. 

30. "To see the calm beyond the 
storm. 

31. "To see the dawn beyond the 
niffht. 

32. "To do the best that can be 
done, and then be resigned. This is the 
religion of Reason, the creed of Science ; 
this satisfies the brain and heart." 

Will not this more than compare with 
the sermon on the mount, when carefully 
studied ? 

I look at it as a mistake when Jesus 
said in his sermon, " Blessed are the poor 
in spirit." I would prefer to have said, 
rich in spirit, for if they are poor in 
spirit they could not have much of the 



104 THE L GICAL E YE 

spirit of God, and if so, I fail to see 
how they would, or could, expect the 
kingdom of heaven, if Jesus' other teach- 
ings have any significance. 

Again, he says: "Blessed are they 
that mourn, for they shall be comforted." 

Now all intelligent people well know 
that millions of good people have mourned 
and Jesus or his heavenly father did not 
comfort them ; they have died in utter 
despair without being comforted, in one 
continuous stream of misery and woe, all 
through the nineteen centuries of the 
Christian era. 

'* Blessed are the meek, for they shall 
inherit the earth." It is a well-known 
fact that the meek has never inherited the 



WILL SEE 105 

earth, either before or since the birth of 
Jesus, and he, making such a promise, 
did not avail anything, but that the 
strong and boisterous, independent, ego- 
tistic, selfish, tyrannical bigots who have 
been inheriting the earth. Jesus ought to 
have known better than to have made 
such a statement. I see nothing sublime 
or blessed in it ; it has proven to be a 
failure, for the meek have been trodden 
upon, as the Logical Eye will see. 

"Blessed are they which do hunger 
and thirst after righteousness, for they 
shall be filled." Now, I doubt if Jesus 
himself knew what this all meant ; for if 
any one became full of righteousness that 
it would avail them anything, as he 



106 TEE L GICAL EYE 

says: ^'None righteous; no, not one, for 
they all come short of the glory of God." 
So you see that his teaching, from begin- 
ning to end, is a mixed mess of contra- 
dictions. 

"Blessed are the merciful, for they 
shall obtain mercy." In like manner as 
in his other declarations, it has proven a 
failure. Every one who understands the 
history of man since the days of Jesus, 
know that the merciful have not in all 
cases received mercy, no doubt in thou- 
sands and millions of cases ; and I offer 
instead of Christian teaching, an idea of 
creation, or natural causes, instead of a 
creator, thus : The universe contains all 
the eternal principles, causes and forces, 



WILL SEE 107 

governed by conditions and circumstances, 
that create the phenomena of life and 
design. 

The above declaration contains all the 
idea of the universe, which is an unlim- 
ited vt^hole of every conceivable object and 
principle. Therefore the universe is in 
possession of everything necessary to cre- 
ate or transform all things, and changes 
that may occur whenever the conditions 
admit. To speak scientifically, the uni- 
verse is in all its entity the greatest 
chemical combine that the intellect ever 
conceived ; and this being the case, which 
cannot be denied, can we not conclude with 
perfect safety that the universe possesses 
all the necessary means to create or 



108 THE L GICAL EYE 

transform its contents into worlds, or 
planets, without using other agencies, such 
as supernatural agency? The universe does 
not, and can not, contain anything but 
natural principles. The universe has all 
the necessary appliances from all enter- 
nity unto all eternity. It could not, or 
need not, employ any supernatural assist- 
ance ; therefore the idea of a God which 
always infers to be supernatural, has 
never been needed to be employed in the 
great works of the universe, as the Log- 
ical Eye will see. 

The universe contains all there is in 
it, no more or less; therefore, science 
teaches beyond a doubt the basis of 
everything is matter. Mind has never 



WILL SEE 109 

been known to act independent of matter. 
Mind is a product of matter and 
acts in concert with matter. Spirit is 
the reflection or result of matter. Spirit 
cannot be personal nor can it be applied 
as a being. The aim of theologians is 
to apply spirit as a being, or to say 
''God is a spirit," which confuses and 
mystifies the whole system of Christian 
theology. That is where Webster failed 
when he tackled the word spirit in order 
to make spirit and being synonymous. 
He admits spirit to be force, energy, 
life, intelligence, etc., which logically is 
the result of matter. To make his defi- 
nition of spirit suit his theology, he 
says, in definition No. 6, ''Spirit is an 



1 10 THE L aiGAL EYE 

immaterial, intellectual substance." What 
bosh! As though the immaterial could 
be substance. This prepares him for 
definition No. 7: ''Spirit is an imma- 
terial, intelligent being, same as God." 
This compares favorable with his theology 
and shows him to be biased by his 
Christianity in his definitions. An im- 
material universe would be total dark- 
ness without anything to produce a 
single spark of light. An immaterial 
universe, with an immaterial God, would 
be in poor condition to begin business. 
As this immaterial being would be an 
immaterial nothing, then this being would 
have to come into existence out of noth- 
ing. Then he, she, it, or God (if you 



WILL SEE HI 

wish to call it), would have to commence 
in that empty universe, create himself 
first out of nothing, then worlds, 
planets, sun, moon and stars out of 
nothing. Cannot the Logical Eye see 
that this is what Christians teach? And 
they cannot teach otherwise if they are 
guided by their Bible, from the very 
fact that it teaches that their God began 
with nothing but an empty universe, and 
if it be logical that matter had to be 
created, it is just as logical that (jrod 
had to be created first, before the crea- 
tion of matter could be begun. 

I wish to be understood on this one 
point, that there is no logical evidence 
of a swperhuman intellect in the uni- 



1 12 THE L aiCAL EYE 

verse. No man knows of anything but 
by his intellect or what some other man 
taught him, therefore, he has no idea of 
anything only through himself or others, 
so this proves beyond all cavil that man's 
intellect is the highest intellect in the 
universe so far as man's knowledge is 
capable of comprehending. The argu- 
ment and contents of this chapter 
answers the question, "What do I offer in 
place of Christianity," including the fol- 
lowing composition: 



WILL SEE 113 



Svolution and Barbarism— 
Free-thought has slain both Satan and God, 

We ne'er shall see them more, 
They used to fight and quarrel o'er man, 

To get their soul and gore. 

Gen. 6: 6, 7— 
This God, he said, "made this our world," 

And that, with good intent, 
Then afterwards it grieved his heart, 

Which made this God repent. 

Gen. 3: 5, 6, 7, 22— 
This Satan talked with Mother Eve, 

And said, ''they would not die," 
And when they took the fruit and ate, 

It proved this God did lie. 



1 14 THE L GIOAL EYE 



Theology and Science — 
For years, this God and Satan roamed, 

And did like thunder roar; 
But Science smashed their hoary heads, 

And then they were no more. 

Christian Dispensation — 
Salvation by this God was tried, 

For Satan hell was made, 
When proves to be no good all 'round. 

The preacher won't get paid. 

This Day and Time— 
This Devil, and God, we do not need. 

Nor preachers' mystic lore. 
For truth and light dispels that might — 
Free-thought forever-more. 

Composed by the Author. 



WILL SEE 115 



CHAPTER II. 

THE LINEAGE AND CHARACTER OF JESUS. 

T SHALL endeavor to treat this subject 
with all the fairness possible, in order 
to haTe my readers see what may be 
called -the other side of the true character 
of Jesus, which has not been ordinarily 
presented or investigated. I shall not at- 
tempt to attack any moral precept that 
Jesus taught, or moral acts or examples, 
but the immoral and inconsistent teach- 
ings, acts and examples. I shall handle 
them unsparingly, so my readers may see 
both the logical and illogical side of the 
picture of the life and character of the 
son of man, Jesus. In regard to a 



1 16 THE LOGICAL EYE 

messiah being promised to the Jews from 
root the of Jesse, through the loins of 
David, the lineage of Jesus is most in- 
comprehensively mixed. 

The two accounts given in Matthew 
and Luke are neither of them a lineage 
in any sense of the word for Jesus, as 
one runs from David to Joseph, and the 
other from Joseph to David, and yet 
none claim that Joseph is the father of 
Jesus ; therefore, why is there any need 
of giving Joseph two lineages, as he is 
not the parent of Jesus? It does not 
make a lineage for Jesus in any sense of 
the word ; and neither do we find any 
lineage recorded for Mary, who was the 
mother of Jesus, from David. 



WILL SEE 117 

Now, if Luke could not give aay- 
thing but a supposition upon which to 
base the lineage of Jesus, he would have 
shown more discretion if he had held his 
peace, and avoided the lineage question 
altogether. A supposition is not a fact, 
and my readers will find upon examina- 
tion that Luke gives this genealogy of 
Joseph as a supposition; besides, no Chris- 
tian claims that Joseph was the father of 
Jesus. If they did, it would do away 
with the doctrine of the immaculate con- 
ception of Jesus, which they claim to be 
a true doctrine. But truth and reason 
teaches it to be as false as any heathen 
mythology on record. Again, there is a 
difference of fourteen generations from 



118 THE L GICAL EYE 

David to Joseph in the respective geneal- 
ogies in Matthew and Luke, whose ac- 
counts also vary in regard to the names 
of the fathers of these generations — save 
three, which agree. These discrepancies 
indicate a poor quality of inspiration on 
the part of one or both of these evan- 
gelical writers. Perhaps their God was 
asleep and taking a rest at that time, as 
we find in Genesis that he rested from 
his labor on the seventh day, which in- 
fers he was very tired after getting 
through that "big job" of creation. 

As the narrators were accustomed to 
depend upon divine dictatorship, and only 
habitually acting in the capacity of De- 
ity's instructions, they were now thrown 



WILL SEE 119 

temporarily upon their own resources, 
therefore they made sad work of the 
genealogical records. If this God aimed 
to give us a lineage of Jesus to David 
he would have had it so recorded, so as 
to leave no room for doubt concerning 
it. One lineage would have sufficed to 
establish the true descent of the promised 
Messiah, through the loins of David. If 
there were two given, this God should 
have seen to it that they corroborated 
in every particular. The genealogy should 
have been traced only to Mary, showing 
that she was descended from David ; but 
before I conclude this part of my subject 
I will give reasons for beliving that she 
was not of the tribe of Judah, but of 



120 J HE L GICAL EYE 

Levi. As Elizabeth, the wife of Zacha- 
rias, was a Levite, of the daughters of 
Aaron, the priest (Luke, 1:5), as Mary, 
being a cousin to Elizabeth, the Levite, 
it necessarily will prove Mary to be a 
Levite ; this cannot permit of Mary being 
a Judahite. 

This sets aside the possibility of 
making a lineage from David to Mary 
and Jesus, without the slightest hope of 
a lineage for the Messiahship, as the 
Logical Eye will see. Some Christians 
claim it was a Jewish custom to trace 
a lineage through the father for the 
mother, but Jesus had no father, save 
the pretended Holy Ghost, who overshad- 
owed the virgin Mary, and they could 



WILL SEE 121 

not fix him a lineage through the Hol}'^ 
Ghost's parentage from David, and if at- 
tempted they would have to prove that 
King David was the Holy Ghost's father. 
So you see this custom would not work 
in the case of Jesus and his mother, 
Mary. I will in another part of this 
work endeavor to prove to my readers 
the true parentage and lineage of Jesus, 
though it does not bring him into the 
line of David. 

From a careful examination of this 
whole matter, I am inclined to adopt the 
opinion held by the Jewish nation, that 
this Jesus, the son of Mary, was an im- 
postor. I am aware that the scriptures 
in many instances repeat the assertion 



122 THE LOGICAL EYE 

that Mary and Jesus were of the line of 
David, but when an effort is made to 
estoMish this claim by valid testimony, it 
is * 'weighed in the balance and found 
wanting." We are also aware of the 
fact there has been many interpolations 
in the scriptures by some of the fathers 
of the church, and it would be to their 
interest to make such interpolations to 
assist Jesus to the line of David, while 
there is no probability of any interpola- 
tion to destroy his line to David; there- 
fore, when we find scripture that destroys 
his lineage to David, it is not reasonable 
that it has been tampered with and it 
will justify us to accept such scripture 
as evidence in the case. 



WILL SEE 123 



CHAPTER III. 

THE ACTS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST. 

JOHN the Baptist is declared to be the 
most unimpeachable witness of the di- 
vinity of Jesus, but when we examine 
John's testimony we find it very weak 
and unsatisfactory. There should be no 
flaws in the evidence of one who an- 
nounces himself as the herald of the 
Messiah, the voice of one crying in the 
wilderness: ''Prepare ye the way of the 
Lord, he that cometh after me is might- 
ier than I, whose shoe latchet I am not 
worthy to unloose."" (Matthew Chap. 3: 
3, 4.) John the Baptist also claims to 
have had direct information from his God 



124 THE L GIOAL E YE 

as the means of identifying the Messiah 
when he should first appear to him. 
The spirit of God was to descend in the 
form of a dove and remain upon him, 
and in the thirty-fourth verse of the first 
chapter of John, he says: ''I saw and 
bore record that this is the Son of God." 
Referring again to the third chapter 
of Matthew, when John the Baptist bap- 
tised Jesus, we are told that the dove 
descended and the voice from heaven 
said: "This is my beloved son in whom 
I am well pleased." (Mark 1: 1(),M 
Luke 3: 22.) Now, according to the 
statements contained in these passages, 
John the Baptist had all the testimony 
anyone in like circumstances would re- 



WILL SEE 125 

quire to convince him that this Jesus, 
whom he had baptised, was the Christ, 
but so far from being convinced, we are 
informed in Matthew 11: 2, 3 that while, 
John was in prison, he commissioned 
two of his disciples to go and ask Jesus: 
"Art thou he that should come, or do 
we look for another?" The idea that 
John after seeing what he had seen, and 
hearing the voice from heaven telling him 
that Jesus was the son of God, should 
send and ask such a question. This proves 
that there is a contradiction in the testi- 
mony of John. It shows on the face 
of it that John did not see a dove or 
hear a voice from heaven, or he never 
could have doubted for one moment as 



126 THE L GICAL EYE 

long as he lived that Jesus was "the 
one to come," and would never have 
sent his disciples to make such absurd 
inquiry. Some one in writing these gos- 
pels has evidently made false statements 
regarding John's testimony and faith, but 
their stories of the fore runner of Jesus 
do not hang together; no one claims 
that John the Baptist himself wrote any 
portion of these accounts of his mission, 
as they are so contradictory in regard 
to John's testimony and faith. It fol- 
lows that the fraud and deception are 
chargeable upon the writers and others. 
This leaves the son of Mary minus a 
very important witness so far as John 
the Baptist is concerned. John being in 



WILL SEE 127 

prison had time and opportunity to re- 
flect over both his own and Jesus' 
career, and it is apparent why- 
John became skeptical in regard to the 
truth of Jesus being the true Messiah. 
The circumstances point in this direction 
that he being acquainted with all the evi- 
dence and surroundings in their family 
relations, give ample reason for his in- 
quiring of Jesus if he ''be the one to 
come, or do we look for another?" 
John became convinced there was a 
scheme in this matter of Jesus' Messiah- 
ship. If John had told all he knew 
about Jesus and their family relation, it 
would be a shock and surprise to those 
zealous Christians, by putting their doc- 



128 TEE LOGICAL EYE 

trine in quite a different light. After 
John had been cast into prison, this 
mighty miracle worker, who pretended to 
raise the dead, heal the sick, cast out 
devils and restore sight to the blind, 
either could not or would not raise a 
finger in John's behalf, and in presence 
of the kindness which John had extended 
toward Jesus at the commencement of 
the latter's career, allowed John to re- 
main in prison until he lost his head. 
We are not informed that Jesus ever 
expressed the slightest regret or concern 
over the sad fate which had befallen his 
kinsman and forerunner, yet John had 
endorsed Jesus and virtually introduced 
him to his age and nation as the long- 



WILL SEE 129 

promised Messiah, but not from his own 
free will, but undoubtedly through the 
influence of John's father, Zacharias, 
which I refer to again in another part 
of this chapter. Verily, gratitude ap- 
pears to have been a virtue of slight ac- 
count in the estimation of this pretended 
son of God. Now, instead of Jesus as- 
sisting John as he did Peter and Paul in 
casting them out of prison, he skipped 
the country and went to Galilee as you 
will see. (Matthew 4: 12). Further- 
more, why did he not raise John from 
the dead after he was beheaded? This 
would have been a much more undisputed 
miracle than in the case of Lazarus, be- 
cause there cannot be the slightest room 



130 THE L GICAL EYE 

for dispute about John not being dead, 
and if Jesus had placed John's head on 
his shoulders so he could have died a 
more natural death, it would have been 
beyond all cavil in regard to the miracle, 
and John did surely deserve this from 
the hands of Jesus. It would have 
shown the proper gratitude to John. I 
fail to find in my research in history 
such diabolical ingratitude as in this case 
of Jesus toward John the Baptist; and 
when the disciples came and told Jesus that 
John was beheaded (Matthew 14: 12, 13) 
he left by ship to a desert place, proba- 
bly in fear of losing his head also by 
King Herod. Justice demanded Jesus 
to show his professed power by restoring 



WILL SEE 131 

John to life. It also would have been such 
conclusive evidence to Herod that in all 
probability it would have converted King 
Herod to an undying faith in the Mes- 
siahship of Jesus, and saved him leaving 
for that desert place; but nay, he depart- 
ed and did not show any disposition to 
even attend the funeral of John the Bap- 
tist. I suppose he thought, as he had 
said to one of his disciples who asked 
permission of Jesus to attend the 
funeral of his father, but Jesus denied 
him, saying: "Let the dead bury the 
dead;" and further, it does not appear 
anywhere in the life of Jesus that he 
ever attended funerals to comfort mourn- 
ers. Why did he not practice what he 



132 THE L O GICAL EYE 

taught when he said: ''Blessed are they 
that mourn for they shall be comforted." 
Jesus' teachings and examples have been 
improved by modern civilization. If he 
were to visit our American churches and 
see the interest being taken in paying 
the last sad rights to departed friends, 
he would have to say: "They have de- 
parted from the faith and example I 
taught when I told my disciple to ^let 
the dead bury the dead.'" But nay, 
verily, the world is improving Christian- 
ity, instead of Christianity improving the 
world, and the world will continue to do 
so until Christianity will be quite a re- 
spectable religion to what it was nineteen 
hundred years ago. 



WILL SEE 133 

But to return to the story of Zach- 
arias, the high priest, which we find in 
the gospel of James (who was a half 
brother of Jesus). This gospel Christians 
reject as apocryphal without a just cause, 
for the compilers that pronounced it 
apocryphal had no authority to do so. 
For no man or council of men have any 
right, under any consideration, to say or 
decide what gospel is genuine or spurious. 
If they had accepted this gospel in the 
canon it would destroy the doctrine of 
Jesus' divinity and the immaculate con- 
ception. All unprejudiced minds will have 
to, and did admit, in the early age of 
the church, that this gospel was as sacred 
as any of the gospels. We find in this 



134 THE LOGICAL EYE 

gospel of James that Joachim and Anna 
were the parents of the virgin Mary. 
When she was but three years old her 
parents took her to the temple to be 
reared as a virgin under Zacharias, the 
high priest, to receive instructions as 
other virgins were at the same time, 
also as children are in the present day 
in Catholic convents. We are informed 
in this account that her parents gave her 
to the Lord. This narrative also states 
when she was twelve years old, the com- 
mon priests of the temple convened them- 
selves into a council to consider what 
action should be taken in the case of the 
virgin Mary, that she might not defile 
the temple of God. The question is, how 



WILL SEE 135 

could this young virgin defile the temple 
unless she had been defiled? It does not 
appear that any of the common priests 
could have been the guilty party, as it 
was they who had come to the conclusion 
to investigate the case of Mary ; and those 
priests reported the result of their investi- 
gation to Zacharias, the high priest, who 
is reasonably supposed to have been the 
guilty party, and the effect of which 
caused Zacharias to issue a proclamation 
to the widowers of Israel, ordering them 
to present themselves, staff in hand, at 
the temple, that he might bestow a vir- 
gin upon any widower who was so for- 
tunate (or unfortunate) as to merit the 
Divine approval. 



136 THE LOGICAL EYE 

Now, Joseph was a widower, and a 
carpenter by trade. When he heard the 
glad news he became excited (as all wid- 
owers would likely be, under similar cir- 
cumstances), and he threw aside his 
hatchet, grasped his staff, and ran with 
his competitors to the temple ; and on 
their arrival the high priest took their 
staves and retired to the holy of holies, 
where he presented his supplications to 
the God of Israel, who afterward made 
known to Zacharias and all present his 
will regarding the virgin. When he re- 
turned the staves to the widowers a sig- 
nal of a dove on Joseph's staff proved 
that Joseph was the honored (?) individual 
upon whom the lot had fallen. But when 



i 



WILL SEE 137 

Joseph beheld the young virgin, and re- 
alized that she was but a mere child, and 
he being well advanced in years, he natu- 
rally felt the disparity that existed between 
them in age, and told Zacharias that if 
he took for a wife so young a girl he 
would be a laughing-stock and reproach 
throughout all Israel. But Zacharias gave 
him to understand that the hand of their 
God was in this matter (this is one sam- 
ple of priest-craft), and that the virgin 
had been assigned to him in a peculiar 
manner by Deity himself. As a clincher, 
the priest reminded Joseph of the terrible 
punishment which overtook Korah, Nathan 
and Abiram, who rebelled against Moses 
in the wilderness, when the earth opened 



138 THE LOGICAL EYE 

its mouth and swallowed those three reb- 
els (like Jonah swallowing a whale ! — vice 
versa). Such remarks and words of warn- 
ing from the priest produced their nat- 
ural effect upon the credulous widower, 
who was frightened, as the records states, 
into accepting the virgin, although it is 
probable that Joseph did not then realize 
all that the situation implied. However, 
he realized it more fully six months later, 
when he returned to his home, where he 
had taken his betrothed (a virgin, as he 
supposed), till the period of betrothal 
was ended with the intention of complet- 
ing the marriage, he found his virgin in 
a very improper condition. 

Now, Joseph knew that he was 



WILL SEE 139 

guiltless in this matter, but he was 
afraid that others would not entertain a 
belief of his innocence when the nature 
of things become fully known. He sus- 
pected that some kind of a fraud had 
been played upon him, which was cer- 
tainly the case, but could not tell just 
whom to blame, or what to do about it. 
The high priest, Zacharias, hearing of 
Joseph's return, sent for him and the 
virgin to appear at the temple and pre- 
tended to investigate the matter which 
terminated in hoodwinking the public by 
making them believe that the whole 
transaction was a divine arrangement of 
their God to have a Messiah born unto 
the Jews by an immaculate conception on 



140 THE L GICAL EYE 

the part of a virgin. The reader will 
find the full account of the whole trans- 
action above spoken of in the gospel of 
James, the half-brother of Jesus, who 
was chief apostle and first bishop of the 
church in Jerusalem. Owing to this 
fact his gospel ought to have been can- 
onized with the other four gospels of the 
New Testament, as James being a half- 
brother of Jesus, his detail of the con- 
ception and birth of his brother Jesus 
ought to be considered better authority 
than any other one of the apostles, and 
the only reason we can see why this 
gospel was not placed in the canon is 
that it tells facts that destroy the funda- 
mental principles of the Christian faith. 



WILL SEE 141 

We will return to the subject of Zach- 
arias, as it appears he not only extri- 
cated himself from an extremely embar- 
rassing position with the virgin, but also 
succeeded in impressing Joseph with the 
idea that so far from being disgraced by 
what had occurred, he had been specially 
distinguished by the Almighty as being 
the chosen husband of the mother of the 
son of their God. You see Zacharias 
managed this case more skillfully than 
did David in his diflSculty with Uriah, 
nor was he compelled to have anyone 
sacrificed. But Zacharias played his 
cards to better advantage, in fact so 
skillfully that no one was compromised 
and every one pleased. Thus Joseph 



142 THE L GICAL EYE 

and Mary were finally united in marriage. 
My readers can see with a Logical Eye 
the true lineage and parentage of Jesus, 
the son of the virgin Mary. From all 
the testimony I can find, it is conclusive 
that Zacharias was none other than 
the real father of Jesus, and it was 
he who instructed the virgin to tell the 
remarkable story of the overshowing of 
the holy ghost and what the child's name 
should be called, instead of the preten- 
tious story of an angel appearing unto 
the virgin and telling her these things of 
a child being conceived and born in a 
supernatural way. Priests and preachers 
from time immemorial have had nothing 
to . do but to study out methods for 



WILL SEE 143 

hoodwinking and deceiving the people, 
and their efforts, to say the least, have 
usually been crowned with unqualified 
success. There is good reason for being 
convinced that had the virgin not chanced 
to be a near relative of Zacharias' wife 
he never would have taken the trouble 
to have issued that proclamation to the 
widowers, but that the deluded child, 
who had been thus infamously debauched 
and ruined, would have been consigned 
to some dungeon or pit of that prototype 
of the modern convent known as the 
temple, where all traces of the crime 
and her shame might have been obliter- 
ated. And let me say here, that in my 
opinion the first infernal nunnery that 



144 TEE L O GICAL EYE 

was ever established was Solomon's Tem- 
ple, called the house of God, and the in- 
stitution has not yet lost its identity, but 
exists and flourishes in many parts of 
the world and even in our own midst. 
Now, inasmuch as the Jews, or a portion 
of them, could be imposed on through 
their faith in an expected Messiah, Zach- 
arias boldly decided to take advantage of 
the national traditions and expectations, 
and terrorized or persuaded his son John 
into assisting him in carrying out the 
scheme by proclaiming the doctrine and 
advent of the promised Redeemer. No 
doubt but that this was the reason that 
John became a forerunner of Jesus. 
The evidence indicates that the whole 



WILL SEE 145 

matter was a family concern and all these 
steps were taken simply to avert ex- 
posure and disgrace of Zacharias, the high 
priest, and family, also the virgin Mary, 
as the Logical Eye will see. 



146 THE L GICAL EYE 



CHAPTER IV. 

BOYHOOD OF THE PKETENDED MESSIAH. 

A X 7'E find in the rejected gospels of 
this man Jesus a greater detail of 
his life than we do in the four gospels 
of the common New Testament. There is 
a gospel, claimed to be given by St. 
Thomas, which was considered by the 
early fathers of the church as sacred as 
any of the four gospels which treats of 
his boyhood. It says that when he played 
with children and their conduct did not 
suit him, he would curse them, and their 
immediate death would be the result. The 
people considered him a very bad boy. 
This gospel states that he would fly into 



WILL SEE 147 

a passion as readily as other boys. We 
are told of a boy who chaDced to run 
against Jesus when passing on the street, 
who caused the boy to fall dead. I will 
give you the account in the exact words 
as recorded in the gospel of St. Thomas 
the apostle, chapter 2: 7. Another time 
Jesus went forth into the street, and a 
boy running by rushed upon his shoulder 
(8th verse) at which, Jesus being angry, 
said to him, "Thou shalt no farther go," 
and he instantly fell down dead. (11th 
verse). Then the parents of the dead 
boy, going to Joseph, complained, say- 
ing, "You are not fit to live with us in 
our city, having such a boy as that." 
- Now, 1 think they were right, and 



148 THE L O GICAL EYE 

according to these records Jesas did not 
act much like a meek and lowly lamb of 
God, who came to take away the sins of 
the world, but rather the reverse, being 
more like a wolf in sheep's clothing. On 
one occasion ho bids his followers beware! 
(12th verse). "Either teach that he bless, 
and not curse, or else departed hence with 
him, for he killeth our children." 

(13th verse). "Then Joseph called the 
boy Jesus by himself and instructed him, 
saying : * Why dost thou such things to 
injure the people so that they hate us 
and persecute us ? ' " All the good this 
did can be inferred from the fact that 
Jesus replied to Joseph as though he 
did not know what he was talking about. 



WILL SEE 149 

(16th verse). "Aud immediately they 
who had accused him became blind." This 
account evinces somewhat the real charac- 
ter and principle of Jesus. Was it mor- 
ally right to kill and curse people with 
blindness for such frivolous offences, so 
that every one became concerned as to 
the safety of the lives of their children? 
These accounts make him appear more 
like a wolf among a flock of helpless 
lambs, than like a lamb of God. It is 
in perfect keeping with the account given 
in Luke 19: 27: ''But those mine ene- 
mies which would not that I should reign 
over them, bring hither and slay them be- 
fore me." So you see his conduct was so 
outrageous that people were compelled to 



1 50 THE L GICAL E YE 

inform Joseph that, having such a boy, 
he was not fit to live in their city. This 
makes out rather a bad case against 
young Jesus ; but this is what the rec- 
ord shows, and to dispute the genuine- 
ness of those gospels is only a theologi- 
cal dodge, and only one of the many to 
which Christians resort to in order to patch 
up their doctrine. The only reason these 
gospels were rejected was because the 
church authorities, when canonizing the 
Bible, saw clearly that those gospels 
would place the character of Jesus in a 
very unfavorable light, and expose him 
as a fraud and impostor. There is no 
more reason for the rejection of these 
gospels than for those which are gener- 



WILL SEE 151 

ally regarded by Christians as inspired, 
and the church left it an open question 
with the members of the council to be 
settled by vote, which was simply by an 
expression of individual opinion on the 
part of those men who sat in council, 
that the authenticity of those books were 
determined. Martin Luther always held 
that the book of Revelation was not in- 
spired, and he was and is considered very 
good authority by most all protestant 
Christians. So we say : Who shall decide 
when doctors disasfree? 



152 THE L GICAL EYE 



CHAPTER V. 

MIRACLES. 

TV TEXT, we will examine this pretended 
Jesus' miracles and the doctrine of a 
supernatural agency, which no rational 
and unprejudiced person can admit their 
possibility. Most Christians claim "the 
age of miracles is past.'' 

We, in the light of science, truth 
and reason cannot admit that the age of 
miracles ever existed, save in the imagi- 
nation of the superstitious Christian and 
heathen people. So the miracles attri- 
buted to Jesus and cited in evidence of 
his boasted divine and supernatural origin 
—we have only to say we deny them, and 



WILL SEE 153 

ask the affirmative to establish evidence 
to sustain them. The miracles ascribed 
to Jesus, both in the canonical and un- 
canonical books, whether pertaining to his 
childhood, youth or manhood, whether of 
benevolent or malevolent purpose, we 
class under the general term rubbish, and 
believe them to be alike unentitled to the 
slightest credence, but at the same time 
if the claim be made that Jesus actually 
wrought miracles and that those attributed 
to him in the so-called canonical books 
are genuine, then we answer that the 
same argument can be used to verify 
the other miraculous occurrences which 
we have previously refered to. If the 
Christians insist upon one, we insist upon 



1 54 THE L GICAL EYE 

the other, and they had no right to tam- 
per with the records and to force our 
acceptance of those pretended miracles 
which placed Jesus in a favorable light, 
while rejecting those which show him in 
an unfavorable one, and if driven to the 
alternative of accepting both, then the 
evidence so far from proving Jesus to be 
God manifest in the flesh, would go far 
toward showing him possessed of a 
demon, because all the benevolent acts 
attributed to him are fully offset by the 
suppressed record of the malevolent ones. 
The testimony proves too much; even 
the accepted version, contains instances 
which the compilers evidently included 
which verify to a certain extent the sup- 



WILL SEE 155 

pressed narratives as they serve to illus- 
trate the other side of Jesus' character. 

The most conspicuous of these is the 
story of the barren fig tree. It will be 
remembered that Jesus, who was consid- 
erably addicted to tramping around the 
country, returning on one occasion from 
Bethlehem, where he had been stopping 
over night, began to experience pangs of 
hunger, and looked anxiously about him 
to see what he could find in the way 
of breakfast. Spying a fig tree some dis- 
tance away, and forgetting that it was 
not the right time in the season for the 
fig trees to bear, as the passage says 
which speaks of this circumstance of the 
barren fig tree: ''That it was a time 



1 56 J HE L GIG Ar EYE 

when figs were not," he hastened to it 
with the expectation of gathering and 
enjoying the delicious fruit, and on arriv- 
ing there and discovering his error, he 
was so disappointed and disgusted that he 
immediately cursed the tree and forbade 
it ever again to bear fruit, whereupon 
the tree that could not naturally bear 
fruit out of season withered away. 

This story is one of the most ludi- 
crous and nohsensical of all legendary re- 
cords, yet the Christian gravely cites it 
as an evidence of Jesus' divinity on ac- 
count of the pretended miracle. Admit 
for a moment, for the sake of argument, 
that such an occurrence could have act- 
ually taken place. Would Jesus not 



WILL SEE 157 

have done better in the way of proving 
his relationship to Deity, would he not 
have acted more with his boasted god-like 
character and origin by working upon 
the fig tree a miracle of a different 
nature? Would it not have been just 
as easy to have bidden the fig tree to 
bear at the wrong time, as to curse it 
and have it wither away? Besides the 
hungry man, or God manifested, would 
have satisfied his hunger. Certainly a 
God who could feed a great multitude 
with a few loaves and fishes, could re- 
verse the laws of nature in this case and 
compel a fig tree to bear at any time of 
the year and if he did not choose to 
manifest his power in this way, why 



1 58 THE L GIGAL EYE 

should he exercise his anger and wreck 
his vengence upon the unoffending tree? 

We will find this incident recorded 
in Mark 11: 12, 13. 

The Christian church has endeavored 
to show that Jesus' action in the matter 
of the fig tree was merely to teach us 
''that it is one of our duties to bear 
Christian fruit ; " that we must not be 
barren in this sense. This assertion is 
too ridiculous to be used as an argument 
or a lesson. 

If this God really desires human 
beings to bring forth Christain fruit, he 
should see to it that our conditions are 
favorable, and he should have adapted 
the means to the end, and if he neglects 



WILL SEE 159 

to do this and we fail to accomplish his 
purpose, upon whom should the blame 
rest, the creator or the thing created? 

Again, we are told that the ''ax is 
laid unto the root of the tree ; every 
tree therefore that bringeth not forth 
good fruit is hewn down and cast into 
the fire." (I suppose this pretended Christ 
meant hell, that burns with brimstone). 
Whose fault is it, the tree's or creator's, 
that it does not bear good fruit ? This 
absurd, irrational teaching is in harmony 
with his whole system. He requires all 
to believe, and yet he does not expect 
all to do so ; and why ? He knows that 
it is not reasonable that they could, but 
then this makes no difference to this pre- 



160 THE L O GIGAL E YE 

tended Jesus — believe or take an eternal 
dose of hot brimstone, or, in other words, 
believe or be damned, which is the only- 
alternative to the unbeliever, according to 
Dr. Jesus, who represents himself as 
being a great physician to heal sin-sick 
souls. But the peculiarity of his treat- 
ment is, he threatens them with this 
remedy and applies it after death to the 
soul that is afflicted with sin, after the 
death of the body ; in fact, he places a 
great deal of faith in this sulphur-bath 
remedy in benefitting mankind, but he 
never lets the patient out to see if the 
cure has been effected or not. One thing, 
however, is sure, the public mind is be- 
coming nauseated with the brimstone rem- 



WILL SEE 161 

edy, a reaction is fast setting in ; even 
believers in this method of treatment of 
the soul, who have advocated this for 
many years, are becoming disgusted. The 
brimstone gospel is rolling off like water 
from the duck's back, and to this doctor 
we cry, quack ! quack ! 

In the light of recent events, it ap- 
pears that this great phyt>ician, so-called, 
will be minus a single agent to offer his 
great brimstone remedy for sin. 

It seems somewhat singular that this 
great specific never received the endorse- 
ment and recommendation of this pre- 
tended Christ's father — God, prior to the 
birth of Jesus. If he did, we have no 
record of this hell story. 



162 THE LOGICAL EYE 

Even Moses, according to the account, 
was honored with a great deal of the 
Deity's confidence and who was notified 
of a great many remedies for sin, and 
have heard no mention of the sulphur- 
bath remedy from his God. But he rec- 
ommended to Moses as remedy for sin, 
flesh and blood to be offered by the 
process of burning, that he might inhale 
the smoke as sweet-smelling savor ; but 
in the Christian era all this was changed, 
and the shedding or offering of this 
Christ's blood, together with endless burn- 
ing of human souls to appease the wrath 
of this God, was done to justify his 
offended law, as we are told of the 
wicked: '*That the smoke of their tor- 



WILL SEE 163 

ment ascendeth up forever and ever" 
(Revelation). 

If this Christ's teachings be true con- 
cerning the doom of the wicked — what 
he in his judgment pronounced wicked — 
the smoke of their torment has been con- 
tinually rising in a black column for 
nearly two thousand years ; and we neces- 
sarily suppose, from the tenor of the 
whole story, that this physician for sin- 
sick souls, who is claimed to have as- 
cended and sits on the right hand of the 
Father, are smelling the smoke from the 
burning brimstone and human souls as a 
sweet-smelling savor unto them. As the 
Father's favorite odor must have been 
from the burning of flesh and blood of 



164 THE L GICAL EYE 

animals prior to the descent and ascent 
of his son Jesus, his sense of smell 
would necessarily have to change, or it 
would be very disagreeable to him to in- 
hale the smoke of the tormented unbelievers 
in his son. I have argued this branch of 
my subject in this manner in order to 
show you that this hell and damnation 
doctrine, as taught by this pretended 
Christ, is a new idea with the God of 
the Jews, as we find it nowhere recorded 
among the Jewish accounts. 

It has been admitted by good Chris- 
tian authority that the doctrine of this 
son of God as it is now recorded is a 
very mysterious one and has never yet 
been fully understood or satisfactorily 



WILL SEE 165 

explained to the free and independent 
thinker, and as to its truth, this has 
been an open question nearly two thou- 
sand years. The records show that it is 
very doubtful if this Jesus himself 
understood or knew just what he aimed 
to teach. Sometimes he would express 
himself in a certain way in regard to a 
certain subject, and shortly after posi- 
tively contradict his previous statements 
and give instructions of a total different 
nature. For instance, he tells us "to take 
no thought of the morrow, but to seek 
first the kingdom of heaven and the 
things of the earth will be added unto 
us." Then he inspired Paul, the great 
apostle, to tell us that ''he that provides 



166 THE L GICAL EYE 

not for his own household hath denied' 
the faith and is worse than an infidel." 
The reader can plainly see that these two 
instances of teaching, one himself, and 
the other by Paul, his instrument, are 
certainly contradictory, from the fact that 
Jesus says ''the things of earth will be 
provided;" then he tells us through 
Paul that they must provide those things 
themselves. The teachings of Paul as 
pretended to be dictated in the latter 
case is more in accord with common 
sense and truth than that of his own, 
and a more rational system to live by. 
We find the best ^f Christians following 
Paul's teaching instead of Jesus', by pro- 
viding for their own household the luxur- 



WILL SEE 167 

ies of life and not depending on dona- 
tions from a supernatural source. 

Suppose this country had adopted 
this Chrij^t's doctrine as he taught it, 
both by precept and example we would 
be tramps the same as he and his dis- 
ciples were, as on a certain occasion 
when the Jewish sabbath came, they 
found themselves unprovided for and to 
satisfy their hunger had to enter the field 
and take corn which was provided by 
the labor of others, which was, in 
short, stealing, or taking, without per- 
mission from tlie owner. This is one 
of the poor examples set forth by the 
pretended son of God. And further, if 
we siiouM adhere to all his precepts and 



168 THE L GICAL EYE 

teachings, which always discouraged any- 
thing of a financial progress that enhances 
the happiness of man, and depend on a 
miraculous power to supply us with food, 
raiment and shelter, we would never have 
had railroads, telegraph, bicycles and sew- 
ing machines, electric lights and auto- 
mobiles, no modern improvements what- 
ever. We would be precisely in the 
position of the heathen and barbarian. 
Christians acknowledge by their daily 
acts by encouraging the progress of the 
world, that their teacher and founder 
was a fraud, and his doctrine a farce to 
this extent. This is shown by the fact 
that they all do their best to get hold 
of the "almighty dollar," which Las 



WILL SEE 169 

more power to bless us, when properly 
applied to our wants, than all the ^ods 
of Christian or other heathen mythologies. 
The world in accordance with the laws 
of evolution, and guided by the principles 
of common sense, can get along without 
the church, but the church cannot exist 
without the principles of the world, and 
its "almighty dollar." The church has 
always stood in the pathway of the 
world's progress and opposed it till they 
found its result could be utilized to their 
own advantage, then they would hasten 
to adopt them and with the most un- 
blushing effrontery pocket all the credit 
connected therewith. Just as the story 
of the old man who helped his wife kill 



1 70 THE L GICAL EYE 

a bear. When it entered their cabin he 
climbed up and set astride of a joist and 
watched the operation of the old lady 
until the animal was quite dead, then came 
down from his perch, went around boast- 
ing to his neighbors how 'W killed a 
bear." In like manner they say, how 
could the world progress without the 
church. 

Again," this Jesus, on one occasion, 
declares that his gospel is ' ' peace and 
good will to men." And again he in- 
forms us that he "came not to bring 
peace, but a sword." The truth is, that 
neither he himself, or anyone else, knew 
for what he came, or ever will know, 
and as for his coming as a redeemer of 



WILL SEE 171 

the world, his advent was a greater curse 
than a blessing ; and this I have already 
shown, to a great extent, and it can be 
further substantiated beyond the shadow 
of a doubt to the minds of every inapar- 
tial investigator. Christianity, like all 
other religions, claims to be the only true 
and infallible one in the world. Now if 
this be the case, why did it not remain 
permanent in the place of its origin? 
This question has no answer which can 
be favorably interpreted for Christianity. 
It may be begged, and has been, but not 
fairly met and answered logically. 

If Christianity was as represented by 
Jesus himself, it surely would have re- 
mained in the place of its origin, as 



1 72 TEE L O GIGAL EYE 

Jesus declared to Peter, that, "Upon this 
rock I will build my church and the 
gates of hell shall not prevail against it." 
Nay, verily, the great gate of hell known 
as Mohammed, the author of another re- 
ligion, prevailed against this church of 
Christ six hundred years after, and drove 
it away from the place of its beginning, 
and it has not been able unto this day, 
being nineteen hundred years, to establish 
itself again therein, and it is as a new 
religion to those people of the present 
day. And why has this religion proved 
a curse, rather than a blessing, to the 
world ? Because it cannot be denied that 
it has caused the most diabolical wars and 
persecutions that has ever darkened the 



WILL SEE 173 

pages of history ; it has engendered strife 
and dissension in iiiany a family circle, 
as Jesus taught that "who would not 
forsake father and mother, brothers and 
sisters, husband and wife for his sake, 
could not expect eternal life." It has 
founded ecclesiastical monarchy and despot- 
ism known as Romanism, which holds in 
superstitious thralldom the greater portion 
of the followers of Jesus ; and as for 
Protestantism, so far as it has succeeded 
in gaining power, it has not been a unit 
behind Romanism in urging and enforcing 
its claims. Even in the instance of the 
World's fair, this religion had the audac- 
ity to interfere and dictate as to how it 
should be conducted, whether it should 



1 74 THE L GICAL EYE 

remain open on their pretended Sabbath. 
The oflSicers of the fair were not likely 
to make arrangements for Jesus to ex- 
hibit himself or any of his spiritual king- 
dom, but expected to exhibit nothing but 
the things of this world; in this case this 
religion shows its injustice and com- 
manding disposition as a usurper of rights. 
I now call your attention to some of 
the prayers and petitions attributed to 
Jesus, which, according to the record, he 
was constantly in the habit of offering to 
his (jrod. In the first verse preceding the 
Lord's prayer, he says: '*Be not like 
unto them, for your father knoweth what 
things ye have need of before ye ask 
him" (Mi^tthew 6: 8). If this be so, what 



WILL SEE 175 

logic was there in telling: them to pray 
to their heavenly father, if he knew 
what they needed, and if he thought it 
right to give it would have done so 
without being coaxed or begged. Was 
this not very illogical in Jesus, when he 
told them how to pray and gave them 
the Lord's prayer, in which they are in- 
structed to say, '^Give us this day our 
daily bread." Now if we waited till we 
could get bread by prayer, or until re- 
ceiving it as a gift from the hands of 
this God, in this enlightened age and 
time, it is very apparent we would per- 
ish. Besides, such a prayer is directly 
opposite his God's command, namely: ''In 
the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat 



1 76 THE L GICAL EYE 

bread 'till thou return unto the ground." 
Why, then, ask God to give us bread, 
if he intended to keep his word ? Chris- 
tians know full well, after offering up 
this daily petition, if they do not make 
an effort on their own part to obtain 
sustenance they would have to do with- 
out. Another portion contained in the 
Lord's prayer is as follows: "Lead us 
not into temptation" — as though it is a 
custom of this God to be leading us into 
temptation. Thus the believers are forced 
to admit that this God must be doing 
just that kind of business, otherwise this 
Jesus would not have instructed them to 
pray that way, as he claimed to know 
more of this hermaphrodite God — his na- 



WILL SEE \77 

ture, habits, and will concerning us — than 
any one else could possibly know, as this 
Jesus declared that he and his God were 
one. Now, if it were true that Jesus 
was God "manifest in the flesh," as he 
taught that part of the pra3^er, he was 
simply a God teaching how to ask a God 
to behave. This is as absurd as the idea 
that this God, in the person of this 
Jesus, died on the cross, and in his dy- 
ing moments the God asked the God why 
the God had forsaken the God, and the 
God never answered his own question, 
why he had forsaken himself, as is re- 
corded : "My God! my God! why hast 
thou forsaken me " — the God ? This will 
do for one of the mysteries of Christian 



178 THE LOGICAL EYE 

godliness. As St. Paul says, '' Great is 
the mystery of godliness.'" 

Let us see if there are any good re- 
sults derived from the God praying to 
the God for unity among the believers 
in this God, as we find this prayer re- 
corded in the latter part of John's gos- 
pel. This pra^-er of Jesus to God for 
unity has never been answered. It has, 
in fact signally failed to accomplish the 
desired results in every instance from the 
first establishment of the church under 
the apostolic supervision down to the 
present time, for the apostles themselves 
were not all in unison. Peter and Paul 
could not agree as to certain doctrines 
and quarreled face to face (Gal. 2: 11); 



WILL SEE 179 

Paul said "Peter was to blame." How 
could he dare to censure Peter in that 
way when he possessed the keys of the 
kingdom, which gave him the authority 
to bind and loose all things? In Acts 
15: 39, you will find how Paul and Bar- 
nabas quarreled. The contention was so 
sharp that they separated on account of 
one of their brethren whose nan^e was 
John Mark, who, in Paul's opinion, 
thought not good to take him with them, 
and Paul had so little of the spirit of 
unity he would not yield. You see the 
three-headed or triune God was not unan- 
imous as to the best method of conduct- 
ing business, or work in unison. It was 
the part of the son to pray to the 



1 80 THE L O GICAL EYE 

father for unity, the father's duty to see 
to it, and have the Holy Ghost dictate to 
the disciples and inspire them with the 
spirit of unity, but evidently the party 
of the third part did not fulfill his part 
of the mission in a satisfactory manner, 
for if he had the apostles would not 
have quarreled and had divisions among 
themselves. Seeinor .^ perfect union was 
not maintained among the apostles, who 
are claimed to have been under the direct 
supervision of the Holy Ghost, or in other 
words in^-pired, and say nothing about 
tiie dissentions and disputes of the unin- 
spired Christians, who are also included 
in the prayer for unity, it is clear to 
be seen that the prayer of Jesus has 



WILL SEE 181 

proven a total failure. Before closing 
this chapter I will consider some of his 
other acts and examples in regard to his 
riding into Jerusalem on a donkey colt 
and its mother. Could not any fanatic 
who, by chance, would read the ninth 
chapter of the prophet Zecharias, ninth 
verse, borrow a donkey colt and its 
mother and ride into Jerusalem and claim 
to have fulfilled a prophecy by so 
doing? Could not anyone do the same 
and claim to have fulfilled a prophecy? 
How could we determine which of those 
would be the Messiah? Besides, it is an 
open question as to whether that 
prophecy had any allusion to a Messiah. 
By reading the w^hole chapter I do not 



182 THE LOGICAL EYE 

see sufficient grounds to warrant the 
claim for a Messiahship in the prophecy. 
Besides, we must consider the ridiculous- 
ness of the act. Just think of a God, 
''manifesting himself in the flesh," riding 
into Jerusalem on a donkey! Was it 
really not making a donkey of himself 
in presenting himself in such a manner 
simply to fulfill a prophecy of his own? 
John 12: 14, says: ''Jesus found a young 
ass and sit thereon." Matt. 21: 7, "They 
brought the ass and colt and set him 
thereon." It must have been rather 
diverting and amusing to see Jesus ride 
two asses at the same time, as the 
scriptures say. 

One would naturally conclude from the 



WILL SEE 183 

whole nature of the case, that the goodly 
number of the crowd who followed him, 
howled in derision at the aspect before 
while others, we may presume, them, 
were io^norant enough to think it all right 
to to cry out " Hosanna to the King!" 
Suppose a fanatic should claim he or she 
were the Christ in the second coming (as 
there has been, and is also at the pres- 
ent time), should perform the same feat, 
and enter into any of the large cities of 
the world there would be followers, who 
would in all probability, cry out, " Ho- 
sanna to the Lord," while at the same time 
the more thoughtful and intelligent persons 
would look with amazement at the absurd- 
ity of such an act. Is this not descend- 



184 THE LOGICAL EYE 

ing from the sublime to the ridiculous, 
as the Logical Eye will see? One of the 
gospel ssays, Jesus rode one donkey colt, 
another gospel says, he rode a donkey and 
its mother ; then one gospel says, that he, 
himself found a colt and sit thereon. 
Then the gospel also says, he sent his dis- 
ciples to go to a certain place to find a 
colt, and bring it to him, and set him 
on the colt. It is to be seen, that this 
story is badly mixed, and shows plain con- 
tradictions, which does not present enough 
respectability to be of a divine origin. 

I will investigate another of Jesus^ 
examples or acts. We find in \Ts^^h'\f\y\J< 
chapter ^^^^ how he cast out a legion of 
devils and when they besought Jesus to 



WILL SEE 185 

allow them to enter into the swine, he 
gave his permit, as it appears they did 
not attemp to enter the herd of swine 
until they had gotten his consent. 

It shows that the devils were more 
just than Jesus for not entering the swine 
and damaging the owners, without getting 
the consent of Jesus, which he granted. 
"^d^A (^^^tikfi, 5:12-13.) Why did not Jesus send 
those devils back to hell where he hath 
said the devils and their angels belonged, 
instead of allowing them to enter the 
swine and damaging the man's prosperity 
who owned the herd of two thousand 
head, and at an estimate of two dollars 
per head would be four thousand dollars. 
This is a very low estimate, and perhaps 



186 THE L GICAL EYE 

it was twice that amount in value. Be- 
sides, we find in this devil and hog 
miracle, no disposition on the part of 
Jesus whatever, to recompense the owner 
of the hogs, but left the country, as we 
see in the 17th verse, and not even 
offering an apology to the owner or asking 
the blessings of his heavenly Father to 
rest upon the owner. 

How does this act of Jesus stand as 
an example for others to profit by? 
Does it teach the morals of the golden 
rule that he pretended to teach, which 
he borrowed from the Buddhist religion 
when in India? For the golden rule had 
been taught by Buddha and Confucius 
hundreds of years before Jesus was born. 



WILL SEE ' 187 

Besides all that can be seen in the devil 
and hog story, is the possessing of devils 
and evil spirits and the casting of them 
out, which has lost all influence and 
credence among the advanced thinkers of 
today. 



188 THE LOGICAL EYE 



CHAPTER VI. 

JESUS' PKOMISES. 

'yOUCHING the fulfillment of the 
promises that Jesus made to his 
followers, it has proved as great a fail- 
ure as his prayer for unity of spirit and 
faith ; that is, that the same signs and 
miracles by which it was sought in the 
time of Jesus and apostles to establish 
the truths of the Christian religion, should 
ever be manifested, but it was found 
that devices which could be properly 
resorted to in the days of superstition 
and ignorance, would not avail at a later 
period of the church's history. It was 
found necessary to change the entire tac- 



WILL SEE 189 

tics of ecclesiasticism, even though it was 
in direct violation of the teachings of 
their founder. In this respect they claim, 
that miracles had ceased after the church 
was established. But Jesus never inti- 
mated any such results, but taught in 
positive terms to the contrary. In his 
last commission to his disciples, just be- 
fore boarding the heavenly balloon, as 
you will find recorded in the last chapter 
of Mark, he said: "Go preach the gos- 
pel to every creature ; he that believeth 
and is baptised shall be saved ; he that 
believeth not shall be damned, and these 
signs shall follow them that believe. In 
my name shall they cast out devils, take 
up serpents, drink any deadly things. 



190 THE LOGICAL EYE 

lay hands on the sick and they shall be 
healed." Now this catalogue of signs and 
miracles are not performed by the be- 
lievers in the present age, yet Jesus 
promised positively they would. Now, 
this puts the whole matter in a very bad 
shape when we find his believers do not 
possess the promises made to them. I 
will have to confess that this is the first 
point in this Christ's teachings that gave 
me reason to doubt the truth of his 
teachings — from the fact that I obeyed 
his commands in good faith and he did 
not make his words good or keep his 
promises. I waited five or six years, 
hoping he would commission me with the 
power that he promised in those signs. 



WILL SEE 191 

so that I might show to the world that 
I was a true follower. I asked Jesus 
privately and earnestly about this matter, 
and he did not even respect his promise 
enough to vouchsafe me an answer, 
so 1 began to conclude he was a fraud. 
The more I examined his life and works 
the more I became confirmed in my 
opinion ; consequently I withdrew from 
the church without any acquisitions against 
me whatever. If there be any one doc- 
trine or principle clearly laid down and 
inculcated in the so-called Christian sys- 
tem, it is the promise of those gifts, for 
when the Holy Ghost fell on the disci- 
ples on the day of Pentacost, and pre- 
paring them for the business of evangel- 



192 THE L O GICAL EYJb 

izing the world, then Peter, who was to 
be the '*rock," or "foundation-stone" on 
which the church was to be built, and he 
as Jesus' chosen agent, certainly would 
not make promises that could not be 
fulfilled. Peter, who was so full of the 
Holy Ghost, arose and told his hearers 
(the Jews) that they had killed their 
God, who had left his throne of glory 
and come down to live among them, 
which convicted them to such a degree 
that they cried out, ''Men and breth- 
ren, what shall we do." Peter, then, 
armed with the irresistible authority 
of one bearing credentials from the high 
court of heaven, with cloven tongues of 
fire flashing like lightning around his 



WILL SEE 193 

august brow, called aloud unto them, 
''Repent, every one of you, and be bap- 
tised for the remission of sins." 

I suppose the particular sin of killing 
God manifest in the flesh, was the one 
referred to, for that is what he had been 
preaching about, and his denunciations on 
this point were the cause of their alarm 
and anxiety, which led to their convic- 
tion, repentance and lamentations. Peter, 
in the same sentence, when he told them 
to repent, said: ''You shall receive the 
gift of the Holy Ghost, for the prom- 
ise is unto you and your children and to 
all that are afar off, even to as many as 
thef Lord our God shall call." This is re- 
corded in Acts, 2d chapter. If we are 



1 94 THE L GICAL EYE 

called to be baptised, we can certainly 
claim the pi'omise when it is made as 
positivrely and emphatically as Peter and 
Jesus made them, and the Christians 
shoald not dispute their authority if they 
believe in them as such ; and if they 
dare not claim the promise, or do not 
receive it oa complying with the condi- 
tional demand, it surely lets them out of 
any obligation to their faith. It did let 
me out, that's certain. 

We find in Paul's epistle to the first 
Corinthians, twelfth and thirteenth chap- 
ters, that he recommended them to desire 
and practice these same spiritual gifts 
and signs that Peter and Jesus promised 
to believers. Now, if the church at Cor- 



WILL SEE 195 

inth could claim these gifts, which is the 
miracle-working power and direct revela- 
tions, why not the churches in this day 
and age, or at least some one of the 
many churches? By such an indication 
the disputes of the various denominations 
as to which of them is right, might be 
eternally settled, that is, if any of them 
are right and can prove to the world the 
true church of this pretended Jesus. It 
is clearly demonstrated by the teachings 
of this Jesus and his apostles that the 
gifts and signs were promised to all be- 
lievers, and the apparent fact of the non- 
fultillment on the part of this Jesus 
shows conclusively that his teachings were 
unreliable, farcical and failed to accomplish 



1 96 THE L GICAL EYE 

what the teacher evidently intended. 1 
wish every Christian to consider as to 
whether he can possibly be possessed of 
any faith in this pretended Lord Jesus, 
if what he said in Luke 17: 6, be true, 
that his followers have faith as a grain 
of mustard seed they could command a 
sycamore tree to be removed and planted 
in the depths of the sea and it should 
be done. When we consider the diminu- 
tive size of the mustard seed, and reflect 
that the Christian's faith (if he has any 
at all) need be only of the same minute 
proportion to enable him to pluck up a 
large tree, imagine if you can, of 
what microscopic dimensions the faith of 
the Christian must be when he has not 



WILL SEE 197 

the power to uproot and remove a single 
blade of grass by the power of faith. I 
am sure that I am safe in affirming that 
there is not a single Christian on the 
earth today who could transplant a blade 
of grass by the exercise of faith alone, 
or even move a grain of sand, yet they 
are told by Jesus that if they have faith 
to the amount of a mustard seed they 
could remove a mountain. Now, if the 
standard measurement applied by Jesus 
to a Christian's faith be correct, it is 
apparent that the faith of the very best 
Christian on earth today must be of such 
small dimension that even the eye of this 
Jehovah will fail to discern it. But to 
return to Peter, who told the Jews, who 



198 THE L GIOAL EYE 

with wicked hands had crucified and slain 
their Lord and Saviour. Now, how 
could Peter accuse them of a wicked 
act, when they were only assistino^ his 
God in carrying out this pretended plan 
of salvation, which was ordained by this 
God before the foundation of the world? 
If they had not slain their Lord he 
would have died a natural death or have 
been translated alive like the fabulous 
story of Elijah, the prophet, in which 
case there would have been no innocent 
blood shed, and consequently no atone- 
ment for human transgression of the law 
of this hermaphrodite God. But [ am 
not through with the examination of the 
record of Jesus. The alleged miracles 



WILL SEE 199 

were evidently mere tricks of legerdemain 
instead of a supernatural agency, and had 
he but lived in our age, these matters 
would all have been exposed before he 
practiced his tricks three years, the time 
claimed to be the period of his ministry. 
There are conjurers in our day, who 
can turn water into wine just as effect- 
ually as Jesus did, not only this, but eat 
fire and glass, swallow cotton, draw im- 
mense silk ribbons from their stomachs, 
put swordis down their throats without in- 
jury to their person, and man\' more signs 
and wonders in the same line which ought 
to make Christians pale with envy. And 
yet they do not claim to do these things 
through any supernntural agency, as Jesus 



200 THE L GICAL EYE 

did. And why? Because the world has 
outgrown the age of childhood and has 
become too wise to credit the doctrine of 
niiracles and superstitious ''frauds" as in 
the days of Jesus. I cannot admit his 
making wine at a feast was in harmony 
with the requirements of good morals. I 
fail to see how those who belong to the 
Christian Temperance Association can but 
help seeing that their Christ set a bad 
example in manufacturing wine, and after- 
wards adopt it at his last supper as an 
emblem of his atonement, who requires his 
followers to continue the use of this al- 
coholic fluid. How can it be said that 
his teachings and examples are in accord 
with the principles and teachings of the 



WILL SEE 201 

temperance and prohibition movement that 
bears his name — Christ's Temperance As- 
sociation. It appears that Jesus was com- 
pelled to frame an excuse when with the 
disciples at his last supper, by telling 
them that they should observe this festi- 
val in rememberance of him, and by 
claiming it was his blood that would be 
shed for them, the poor ignorant dupes! 
And they are many at the present day who 
verily believe when they take a sip of 
wine they are drinking the blood of Jesus. 
Never before in the annals of history 
has mankind been so thoroughly and suc- 
cessfully imposed upon by a farcical 
religious system, and a tissue of clever 
fraud and gigantic swindles. 



202 THE LOGICAL LYE 

In this respect, in if no other, Chris- 
tianity may justly claim precedence over 
all other religions of the world, under the 
burden of which it has ground and 
caused poor humanity to suflfer. And 
many Christians have of late openly ex- 
pressed their disapproval of Jesus' action 
concerning the temperance question. For 
instance; I was an eye-witness of a cir- 
cumstance which took place in Mitchel- 
ville, la., when a certain denomination of 
christians celebrated the sacrament of the 
Lord's supper by administering bread and 
water. 

Now, what do you suppose Jesus 
said to his father, when he looked down 
from the throne of glory and beheld those 



WILL SEE 203 

followers of his sitting in judgment upon 
his own ordinance by substituting water 
for wine, which he had ordered to be 
used to typify his blood, and treating his 
command with open contempt? I am in- 
clined to think that his righteous anger 
and indignation must have waxed hot 
against those presumptous offenders, as 
did his father, God, when he looked 
down from Mount Sinai and saw 
the golden calf that Aaron, his holy 
priest, substituted for worship in place of 
his pretended God of Israel. And had 
it not been too soon for this Christ's 
second coming, he would have descended 
in haste and demolished the water pitcher 
and glasses as Moses did the calf, which 



204 THE L GICAL EYE 

Aaron substituted. The town, Mitchelville, 
la., where the above occurrence took 
place, was dominated by prohibition. I 
heartily endorse and admire the firmness 
and consistency of those, who, in their 
devotion to a principle, had the moral 
courage to take the action they did, even 
in violation of the alleged Lord's com- 
mand. 

There is connected with the life and 
career of Jesus of Nazareth that which 
does not seem thoroughly consistent with 
so noble and upright a character as has 
by common consent been ascribed to him. 
One peculiar incident which does not com- 
pare with one possessed with such good 
qualities is, that he should have been 



WILL SEE 205 

compelled to have kept himself concealed 
and not daring to walk openly at all 
times, and being obliged to flee from one 
place to another, in order to avoid his 
pursuers. 

Now, when we consider the super- 
natural pretentions of his origin and na- 
ture, also remembering him to be under 
the special protection and guardianship of 
his father, God — a fact of which he was 
continually reminding his disciples and 
others, he was certainly safe at all times 
and in all places, and had any person or 
parties endeavored to harm or molest him 
before the appointed time Jehovah would 
surely have paralyzed them on the spot, 
or else he could have exercised in self- 



206 THE LOGICAL EYE 

defense the power which in his boyhood 
had rendered his presence so dangerous 
in every community, and cursed them 
like the poor innocent fig tree, where- 
upon they would have immediately with- 
ered away. 

The readers will observe that the 
narrative given is not consistent with his 
pretended character, though the narrators 
had rather a difficult story to relate, but 
they did the best they could, endeav- 
oring to represent such a specimen of 
humanity. 

Again, when their Jesus went up to 
Jerusalem the last time, he knew it was 
dangerous and anticipated trouble, still 
departing from his usual policy of sec- 



WILL SEE 207 

recy, he determined to take his chances, 
knowing full well that what he had said 
and done previously would be deemed 
sufficient to justify his capture, and when 
in Gethsemane garden, where he prayed 
"until he sweat great drops of blood" (if 
it were blood), his agony evidently pro- 
ceeded more from fear than anything 
else. His submission to the scheme of 
atonement was very reluctant, and, in 
fact, he at the last moment sought to 
evade the long-expected consummation of 
his supposed redemption, for he repeat- 
edly besought his pretended father to let 
the cup "pass from him." Now, sup- 
pose this father, who is pretended to be 
full of compassion, and hearing the peti- 



208 THE LOGICAL EYE 

tions of his only begotten son, had 
allowed the cup of suffering and death 
to pass, and pardon hunianity without 
permitting a crime of shedding innocent 
blood to suffer for guilty offenders four 
thousand years prior, would it not be in 
keeping with justice and morality, as 
the Logical Eye will see? Evidently this 
was Jesus' own thought, but his heavenly 
father held him to the hard bargain, and 
would not remit one iota of the agony 
incidental to the proposed sacrifice. This 
shows the injustice and tyranny of the 
Christian God. Had he failed to do 
this, the saints of the future would be 
unable to wash their robes and make 
them white in the blood of the lamb. I 



WILL SEE 209 

do not UDderstand how these robes could 
be made clean and white by smearing 
and staining them in the blood of the in- 
nocent, but of course the theologians 
inform us this language is simply figura- 
tive, and by accepting this as such, it 
only represents a very bad principle, and 
admitting that there is a life beyond 
(which I have never denied), my sense of 
justice tells me that my garment of 
immortality, if such I may have, and 
do not pretend to know that I will have, 
must not be dipped or cleansed in the 
blood of any innocent being. I do not 
feel disposed to impose my way through- 
out all eternity on the sacrifice of 
another. 



210 THE LOGICAL EYE 

As to this atonement made by this 
pretended Jesus, there is nothing to be 
found in all the heathen mythology as 
barbarous and unjust. It is the very 
essence of barbarism, and the God that 
would instigate such a plan of salvation 
is tenfold worse than the Adam who 
transgressed. As to the capture and cru- 
cifixion of this Jesus, I regret that any 
one would allow themselves to be so car- 
ried away by fanaticism as to become 
involved in a matter that would termi- 
nate in their becoming a malefactor; but 
he had timely warning, and would not be 
guided by it, but seemed to feel that 
some miraculous interposition would at 
the last moment avert the doom which 



WILL SEE 211 

otherwise seemed inevitable ; and not until 
he hung expiring on the cross did hope 
and faith fail him. And when they did, 
his horror and dismay, coupled with the 
intense physical agony he was enduring, 
forced from him that dying exclamation, 
' ' My God ! my God ! why hast thou for- 
saken me ! " In this heartbroken inter- 
rogation we perceive only too clearly the 
absurd and fraudulent claims of the doc- 
trine of the atonement, for, according to 
the narrative, we have here a God dying, 
by proxy, and the claim is constantly 
made that this Jesus was God manifest 
in the flesh ; that in him dwelleth all the 
fullness of the God-head bodily ; that he 
was with the father before the foundation 



212 THE LOGICAL EYE 

of the world, etc., and that God aimed 
to sacrifice himself in the person of his 
son for the sins of a lost and fallen 
world ; that a sin committed by a finite 
asrainst an infinite being becomes an in- 
finite sin, demanding" an infinite expiation, 
in order that the claims of eternal jus- 
tice might be met and satisfied ; that this 
could only be done through the unity of 
finity with infinity ; therefore, God him- 
self, in the person of his son, should 
suffer death upon the cross. But the 
sequel shows that onl}^ the finite, or hu- 
man, portion of Jesus' amalgamated na- 
ture suffered death, else wh}" should he 
say, '' My God ! my God ! why hast thou 
forsaken me? " It was simply, the man 



WILL SEE 213 

Jesus, the son of Mary, forsaken by the 
God, who, it is alleged, had hitherto 
been manifest in him. The death of this 
pretended Jesus being but the death of 
a man, was in no sense an infinite sac- 
rifice, and therefore failed to meet the 
demands of infinite justice, for as God 
only died by proxy, he did not make a 
sacrifice of himself, and humanity's accu- 
mulated guilt is not yet atoned for by 
the God. 

That question so replete with agony 
and reproach addressed by Jesus to the 
God who deserted him in his last moments 
of torture on the cross, has been reecho- 
ing down through the centuries, and has 
never yet been answered, either by the 



214 THE L O aiGAL EYE 

God or his agents; neither can the whole 
Christian fraternity, both Catholic and 
Protestant, ever succeed in answering it 
so as to justify this proxy salvation. 
Christians who pray to their God to be 
with them "in the last hour and article 
of death," also be with them through the 
''dark valley and shadow of death," should 
remember their God refused to stay and 
be with his only begotten son at this most 
important period, when dying on the 
cross. And further, if any Christian dis- 
putes the death of this Jesus being a 
death by proxy, then they cannnot admit 
that this Jesus left the throne of glory 
and came to earth and made a sacrifice, 
because it is claimed he returned back 



WILL SEE 215 

to the throne of God and left the man 
Jesus (who was human), the son of 
Mary, to die. If God so loved the world 
that he gave his only begotten son that 
whosoever believed in him should not 
perish but have everlasting life, should he 
not have pardoned the world, instead of 
allowing his innocent son to have been 
so barbarously sacrificed? 

Why did he have his son teach by 
parables, which are not all easily under- 
stood by some, although when understood 
do not teach good principles? Remember, 
Jesus is represented as being the chief 
character in all the parables that he 
taught, and is likened unto the kingdom 
of heaven, he l)eing the kino^. 



216 THE L GIOAL EYE 

In the parable of the sower, Jesus 
sowed seed on thorny and stoney ground, 
as no logical farmer would do and expect 
good results ; and when do good results 
were obtained, who would be in fault, 
the sower or the result of the seed ? 
Another parable : The Lord of the vine- 
yard who paid a penny a day, and gave 
those who worked from the eleventh hour 
as much as those who bore the burden 
all day. (Matthew 20: 9-12.) 

Was not this a poor example to fol- 
low as a man of justice ? And again, is 
the parable of the nobleman, who left his 
servants talents or money to speculate 
on, and the one who did not speculate 
for his Loi-d was condemned, and this 



WILL SEE 217 

Lord or Jesus said: ''but those mine 
enemies which would not that I should 
rei^n over them, bring hither, and slay 
them before me." (St. Luke 19: 27.) 
Where is the moral in this monarchical 
and rather severe parable? There is 
also a parable of the shepherd and 
the lost lamb. Now, if Jesus is the 
shepherd, his "all-seeing eye" could see 
his sheep and know where they are with- 
out searching to find the lost lamb, as it 
virtually was not lost, the shepherd must 
have known where it was. Besides the 
good shepherd would not have allowed 
his lamb to have gone astray. You see 
there is not anything logical or intelligent 
in this parable. Again the parable of 



218 THE LOGICAL EYE 

the lost coin presents the same kind of 
illogical teaching, as Jesus being the real 
character in this parable should have seen 
where the coin was without having to 
sweep to find it. Another is a parable of 
the wheatfield. (Matthew 13: 24-39). 
That Jesus sowed and let the devil, his 
enemy, sow tares in like manner as his 
heavenly Father let the devil get into the 
garden of Eden, and advise mother Eve. 
Why did he not keep the devil out of his 
field or kingdom, with his great infinite 
power ? He closes this parable, saying, 
it represents the end of the world ; and 
the result of the bad seed that was 
sown in the field, was cast in a firey 
furnace where there was weeping and 



WILL SEE 219 

gnashing of teeth. You see Jesus taught 
in plain language endless punishment, as 
in the next parable of casting a net in 
the sea and catching all kinds that are in 
the sea, then selecting out some, and 
casting others in the fire where there is 
wailing and gnashing of teeth. Now, those 
who are cast in the fire are as much a part 
of this pretended creator's work as the 
other part who were saved. You see logi- 
cally that Jesus taught foreordination and 
eternal condemnation. How can some of 
the clergy of today reject this doctrine 
when we find that it is recorded from the 
beginning to finish, taught by Jesus and 
his apostles in plain language ? When we 
condenm this doctrine we must neces- 



220 THE L GICAL EYE 

sarily and logically reject the author, 
who is Jesus and his heavenly father. 

I might continue this subject much 
further, and show a great many more in- 
consistent teachings of Jesus in his para- 
bles, but I will conclude this chapter by 
referring my readers to St. Matthew ^: / ^ 
11: '^He answered and said unto them, 
because it is given unto you to know 
the inj^steries of the kingdom of heaven, 
but to them it is not given." Of all 
the dogmas that anyone could be guilty 
of expressing, this is a climax. The in- 
consistency of letting some know the 
mysteries of his kingdom and not others. 
Is this not the doctrine of election? 

Twelfth verse: '*For whosoever hath, 



WILL SEE 221 

to him shall be given, and he shall have 
more abundance; but whosoever hath not, 
from him shall be taken away, even that 
he hath." You observe he takes all 
from those that might possibly know a 
little about his kingdom, and gives it to 
those who know all about it. This sur- 
passes all justice, does it not? 

Thirteenth verse: "Therefore speak 
I to them in parables, because they seeing 
see not, and hearing, they hear not, 
neither do they understand." Dear 
reader, who is responsible for not seeing 
or hearing, the creature or creator? The 
Logical Eye can see. 



222 THE L GICAL EYE 

CHAPTER VII. 

THE RESURRECTION. 

nnHE first point I shall consider is the 
deception and fraud practiced upon 
the people, in order to fulfill this Jesus' 
teachings in regard to his resurrection; 
as truth, science and reason, without pre- 
judice, cannot admit of the doctrine of a 
resurrection. I will give to my readers 
some evidence outside of the gospel that 
will show that there were accounts of 
the story of the resurrection, apart from 
the gospel, that will throw some light 
on the subject. At the time of Jesus' 
advent into the world there was com- 
merce between Jerusalem and the East 



WILL SEE 223 

Indias. Those caravan merchants were 
continually passing back and forth, and it 
can be proven by a manuscript found in 
the monasteries in India, that Jesus was 
in India at the time of his not being 
accounted for in the gospel, from the 
time of his youth until he was about 
thirty years old. In this manuscript it 
gives the account of the conviction, cruci- 
fixion and resurrection, and how the 
people were made to believe that Jesus 
had risen from the tomb. 

I will give it in the exact words as 
found in this manuscript, regarding the 
resurrection : 

Manuscript^ chapter H^ 5th verse — 
''Pilate, however, through his own ac- 



224 THE L GIGAL EYE 

tions, feared the throng, and returned the 
body of the saint to his relatives, who 
interred it near the place of execution ; 
the people came to pray at his tomb, 
filling the air with weeping and wailings. 

Sixth verse — ' ' Three days afterward, 
fearing a general uprising, the governor 
sent soldiers to raise secretly the body 
of Jesus and bury it in some other 
place. 

Seventh verse — ' •• The next day the 
throng found the tomb open and empty ; 
so that the rumor was spread that the 
Supreme Judge had sent his angels to 
carry away the mortal remains of the 
saint, in whom had dwelt on earth a part 
of the divine spirit. 



WILL BEE 225 

Eighth verse — ''When the rumor 
reached Pilate he was very aogry and 
forbade them under penalty of slavery 
and death ever to utter the name of 
Jesus, or to pray to the Lord for him. 

Ninth verse — "But the people con- 
tinued to weep and glorify their master 
aloud, so that many of them were led 
into captivity and subjected to torture 
and put to death." 

Now you can plainly see how he 
was resurrected, and how the believers - in 
Jesus in their superstition made them- 
selves believe that Jesus had risen, in 
their imaginations, as you will notice in 
the seventh verse, as given above ; and 
how the governor deceived them in the 



226 THE L GICAL EYE 

sixth verse in regard to the resurrection. 
This manuscript was from the original, 
found in the Himes monastry in India, 
copied by M. Notovitch, translated and 
published by V. R. Gandhi, B. A., Bom- 
bay, India, whom I had the pleasure of 
meeting in Washington, D. C, and re- 
ceived a copy. Prof. Gandhi was a dele- 
gate from India to the world's congress of 
religion at Chicago in 1893. There can be 
no doubt that wbi'e Jesus was in India he 
acquainted himself with what is known 
as the black arts or legerdemain, and 
became a practical magician, and this 
accounts for his pretended so-called mira- 
cles. And there cannot be any doubt as 
to his beinof in India some fourteen or 



WILL SEE 227 

sixteen years, which accounts for the time 
he was absent from Palestine. I am credi- 
bly informed the monasteries in India 
possess many manuscripts that verify the 
fact of his sojourning in India. When 
we consider the plain contradictory stories 
given in the four gospels concerning the 
resurrection, it is one of the most fabu- 
lous and ungrounded, without the slight- 
est principle of truth, that has ever been 
mentioned by man or woman. My rea- 
son for this conclusion is that I find no 
evidence in the supernatural pretentions, 
or in the natural laws and science, to 
prove to me in the slightest degree the 
possibility that the dead body of man or 
woman was ever restored to life, or ever 



228 THE L GICAL EYE 

will be. Possibly some will say, as maiiy 
have said with whom I have held per- 
sonal controversies, when they had no 
argument to bring forward in rebuttal to 
the position I hold in this matter, "sup- 
pose, after all, that we are right and you are 
wrong." To this I can readil}^ I'eply, it is not 
a supposable case. The facts belong to one 
side or the other. The evidence in the whole 
case does not show favorably on the side of 
Christianity. I have yet to tind the first 
Christian with whom I have conversed 
on the subject in a calm and considerate man- 
ner, that did not express more or less 
doubts on some of the essential points of their 
faith. They who doubt ever so slightly 
are not fully convinced of the truth of the 



WILL SEE 229 

idea they doubt. If they were positive that 
the idea was founded upon a solid fact, dovht 
would be absolutely impossible and leave no 
chance for a supposition. Now, if it be 
right for them to prove their position by a 
supposition^ the same argfument can be 
brought against them ; and I will suppose 
that the Mohammed religion be right and 
true, and have them put the question to a 
Christian : Supposing they are all right, and 
the Christian wrong ! Would the Moham- 
medan's supposition effect the Christian any 
more than to excite a smile at its absurdity ? 
Would the Christians regard such as 
an argument ? If not, why then should 
they use a supposition in this way to prove 

the truth of Christianity ? I think I 



230 THE L GIGAL EYE 

have made this clear to anyone who 
would allow their reason to control them 
and that they will not be likely ever 
again to bring forward by way of argument 

this supposition. 



WILL SEE 231 



CHAPTER VIII. 

ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. 

T WILL now view the picture drawn by 
Jesus of the endless punishment which 
he taught in the orospel in Luke. We 
have the story of Dives, the rich man, 
and Lazarus, in which we are vividly re- 
minded of the blessings to be enjoyed 
in the life beyond by those who accept 
Moses and the prophets and the teachings 
of this pretended Jesus, and the curse 
he said should follow those whose sense 
of reason would not permit them to ac- 
cept the above as authority. It is there- 
fore probable that neither Dives, the rich 
man, nor his brother n had accepted the 



232 THE L GICAL EYE 

teachings of Moses and the prophets, and 
for this were to be doomed to eternal 
torment. But where is the man or wo- 
man on whose breast the spirit of com- 
mon humanity predominates, who does 
not see more to love and admire in 
the character of poor tortured Dives, who 
praying for one drop of water to cool 
his parched tongue, can nevertheless spare 
a thought to his kindred, and who is ever 
content to accept his own terrible fate if 
he could only feel * that those whom he 
loved would not be permitted to share it 
with him. 

What about Abraham ? He looks 
down apparently without the the slightest 
heart throb, with no attempt toward con- 



WILL SEE 233 

solation or touched by no feeling of com- 
passion regarding the agonies of a tor- 
mented soul, but with the most perfect 
equanimity and tauntingly reminds Dives 
that he in his lifetime received his good 
things, and Lazarus received the things 
pertaining to a life of poverty. But now 
he is comforted and thou art tormented. 
Now is it possible that this picture drawn 
of future existence by Jesus contains 
proper justice with a penalty not corres- 
ponding with moral justice, as Dives 
simply received the good things of so 
short a period as a lifetime, for which 
he pays a penalty in such a horrid state 
for all eternity ? Yet Lazarus has no 
expression of sympathy or regret for the 



234 THE LOGICAL EYE 

fate of Dives whose charity was extended 
to him to some degree in his former 
state. Ah ! no, Lazarus feels quite 
comfortable in his heavenly abode, resting 
on the bosom of Abraham and probably the 
sight of others only intensify his satis- 
faction. Dives evidently feels that he has 
some claim on Lazurus' gratitude, but the 
latter does not recognize any such claim. 
He is having his good things and the 
spectacle of this eternal hell has no 
power to touch his sympathy, who is one 
of the redeemed saints. This is heaven, 
as portrayed by this Jesus, a place from 
which sympathy, gratitude, compassion 
and every human attribute are forever ban- 
ished. Had Jesus but chosen Plato, 



WILL SEE 235 

S Derates or any person of intellectual and 
moral worth, to typify his heaven, a self- 
respecting man could consistently seek 
admission, but when it comes to Abraham 
his credentials do not entitle him to the 
honor of our acquaintance. 



236 TEE LOGICAL EYE 



CHAPTER IX. 

CHRISTIAN REDEMPTION. 

TN touching the subject of redemption, 
there was a time in Jesus' career, that 
satan, the fallen angel, could have been 
redeemed (that is if there were any truth 
in the redemption), and logic tells us 
that Jesus made a very sad mistake in 
not improving the opportunity. We learn 
in the records that this satan was once 
an angel of light, and he fell. Now the 
opportunity to redeem the fallen angel 
was, when he came to Jesus in the 
wilderness to tempt him, and said: ''If 
thou be the son of God make bread of 
these stones?*' Mark the language, "if 



WILL SEE 237 

thou be the son of God," but Jesus 
would not turn the stone8 into bread. 
Could the devil believe he was the son 
of God when Jesus would not produce 
conclusive evidence? If he possessed that 
power he claimed he could have furnished 
the bread out of stone. Satan tried him 
again; he placed him on a pinnacle of a 
temple, says to him: "If thou be the 
son of God, cast thyself down, for it is 
written that he, God, hath given his 
angels charge over thee lest thou cast thy 
foot against a stone." (You see satan 
could quote scripture as well as Jesus). 
Why did not Jesus jump down and show 
the devil that it wasn't any trick to do 
that, for the angels would light him down 



238 THE L GIOAL EYE 

easy, nad that would have convinced this 
angel of light and converted him, for 
that is what satan wanted — evidence 
that Jesus was really the son of God; 
then there would have been no devil, and 
there would not have been any devilment 
going on all these nineteen himdred years. 
What a pity that Jesus made this mis- 
take and not redeem satan ! But as he 
failed to convince the devil that he was 
the son of God and redeemer, why should 
we be convinced when all the evidence in 
that matter is against him when it is 
logically examined? 

If this pretended creator aimed to pre- 
pare a redemption for fallen man, as it is 
claimed that all fell without being consulted. 



WILL SEE 239 

whether they desire to come under the fall of 
Adam or not, which makes it a positive con- 
demnation to all, why not for justice's sake 
give us a positive salvation, not asking us to 
accept, or reject ? But when this redeemer 
came, he offered redemption on conditions, 
thus giving us a conditional salvation to re- 
move this positive condemnation '• — what 
logic, indeed, this is. Hear what he says : 
"Wide is the gate that leads to destruc- 
tion, and many there be which go in thereat." 
Why did not God empower him to close that 
wide gate and open a still wider one leading 
to that supposed eternal life ? But instead, 
he says — the gate that leads to life eternal 
was made so narrow, and the way so straight, 
that few there he that find it. This indicates 



240 THE L QICAL EYK 

very clearly that the plan of salvation is an 
exceedingly narrow and contracted one to be 
provided, as is claimed, for a lost and ruined 
world, and its only by the merest chance that 
anyone will receive the benefit of it. I fail 
to see how any intelligent, whole-souled per- 
son can get down upon their prayer-bones 
and thank their God (a supposed creator of 
all things) for a plan of salvation which vir- 
tually excludes the major part of his created 
beings. Think of the untold millions 
doomed to pass through that wide portal, 
which Jesus indicated as leading to the 
brimstone region, then contemplate the 
few which John^ the Revelator, tells us 
amounted to one hundred and forty-four 
thousand, which were to be redeemed from 



WILL SEE 241 

off the earth. Imagine these standing at 
the city limits of this new Jerusalem and 
gazing over its golden parapets at the 
many millions of the lost writhing in 
torment, weeping, wailing and gnashing 
their teeth. Will parents who chanced 
to find that narrow gate and secure an 
entrance within the jasper walls and gates 
of pearl, will they in their wanderings 
through those golden paved streets and 
boulevards feel satisfied, knowing that no- 
where in all those "many mansions" will 
their eyes rest upon the loved form of 
the son or daughter whom they agonized 
and desired to usher into life ? When 
they find themselves among the many 
whom seem by chance drawn to that 



242 THE L GICAL EYE 

golden parapet, and gazing with others 
toward that terrible panorama of more 
than mortal agony ever unfolded to their 
view before, by chance among the many 
billions of agonizing souls they espy 
some of their loved ones way down in 
that terrible pit of torture, where fiery 
billows roll beneath their feet, and in re- 
turn their dear children with a recognizing 
glance of the parents' face begs in agoniz- 
ing tones for just one draught from 
the sparkling fountains supposed to flow 
from the throne of God; but nay, 
all help or assistance that might com- 
fort their dear ones is hopelessly 
and forever denied I hem. Then, is 
it ever reasonable to suppose that those 



WILL SEE 243 

parents will or can return to the throne 
of glory with joy in their hearts, and 
sing praises to the lamb of God that 
took away but a small part of the sin 
of the world ? 



244 THE L GICAL EYE 



CHAPTER X. 

THE CHRISTIAN GOD. 

"\ TOW, I will examiDe more fully the 
character of this Christian God. It 
is persistently asc^erted by Christians that 
their God is a beinp: endowed with the 
attributes of omniscence and omnipotence 
— that he knows the end from the be- 
ginning, that every event which has 
transpired in the history of this or any 
other world, from the least to the great- 
est, was known to him from all eternity. 
His mercy and compassion is so great 
that we are told in his pretended word 
that even a sparrow cannot fall to the 
ground without his care. But when a 



WILL SEE 245 

cruel or thoughtless boy aims a stoDe 
at a poor helpless sparrow and that stone 
reaches its destinatioD, the sparrow falls 
and no omnipotent hand is ever out- 
stretched to break the effect of that fall. 
Then Jesus tells us to *'fear not, as 
we are of more value than many spar- 
rows." Yes, we are, undoubtedly, but 
yet, when we look around and see suf- 
fering and want on one hand, and luxury 
and extravagance on the other, when we 
see every specie of injustice flourish, 
mark the wrongs never righted, the woes 
which are never alleviated, and ask the 
whereabouts of this just and omnipotent 
loving being, we wonder why he allows his 
helpless children to be so shamefully treated. 



246 THE L GICAL EYE 

Have we ever heard of any divine 
interposition preventing the Hindoo mother 
from casting her little ones under the 
car wheels of juggernaut? Did he inter- 
pose to save one hundred and fourteen 
innocent and helpless children from being 
crushed and trampled to death during a 
panic which occurred in or about the 
year 1880 in a school building in New 
York city, while a festival was in pro- 
gress ? 

Could not the God who watches over 
sparrows have interposed his protection to 
avert the terrible doom awaiting those 
helpless little ones ? As they are of more 
value than sparrows, why could he 
not have taken those children under his 



WILL SEE 247 

special care at this awful moment as well 
as those birds of the air ? 

The scriptures say that this God will 
give his angels charo^e concerning us, and 
in their hands they will bear us up lest 
at any time we dash our foot against a 
stone. If this promise be true, were 
there not one of the guardian angels who 
could have been spared from that important 
duty of staring deity out of countenance, 
descend and take charge of those helpless 
ones who suffered at the awful crisis 
above speaking of ? But nay, as they did 
not, it only shows |that this God did 
not make his promise good and I endorse 
the sentiment of the poet who said: 



248 THE L aiCAL EYE 

"That the saving of a little child 
And bringing it to his home, 

Is a great deal better business 

Than loafing around the throne." 

All this shows conclusively that this 
Lord's arm to save is shortened, and his 
ear to hear is deaf, that it cannot hear, 
that his heart is so hardened that it can- 
not be touched with our imfirmities. I 
find it is the custom, as far as my knowl- 
edge extends among the priests and clergy, 
to tell bereaved parents that it was the 
will of their creator, and they must sub- 
mit to his divine providence in his per- 
mitting one hundred and fourteen helpless 
little victims to be removed at once. It 
was done for some wise purpose and they 
must accept the affliction as a blessing 



WILL SEE 249 

and that this God saw that the parents 
hearts were too much centered upon their 
offspring that they were in imminent dan- 
ger of loving the creature more than the 
creator, and he removed the little helpless 
rivals in order to draw their affection toward 
him who gives and takes away. I have 
heard ministers in their funeral survices 
endeavor to console parents and friends 
by urging that God removed their chil- 
dren and friends to bring conviction to 
their hearts, and thus be the means of their 
salvation; this is in principle the same, as 
the heathens believe in sacrificing their 
children. 



250 TEE LOGICAL EYE 

" Why should we mourn departing friends, 

Or shake at death's alarm, 
'Tis but the voice that Jesus sends 

To callus to his arm." 

In answer I would say : 

If by the killing of our friends 

That Jesus sends his voice, 
I do not care to heed his call 

Or listen to his noise. 

Is this not duping the people in the 
name of religion in open violation to 
truth and eternal justice ? Is there a 
particle of difference between this chris- 
tian twaddle and the admonition addressed 
by heathen priests to the mothers who 
are moved by their appeals, or terrified 
by his threats who cast their children in 
the Ganges river to be devoured by croc- 
odiles ? In both cases the christian and 



WILL SEE 251 

Hindoo mother is required to sacrifice her 
maternal instincts in order to please and 
worship their imaginary gods. How, then, 
can the christian consistently claim any 
superiority for his God over the heathen 
God ? It seems to me just to class them 
in the same category. Sometimes we are 
informed by christians that we are pry- 
ing into their God's business, and ask 
questions that do not concern us, but in 
reply I will say, that if any one part 
concerns us it necessarily follows that we 
should investigate every principle con- 
tained in that religion. And again we 
may ask when this christian God found 
that his plans and commands were about 
to be disturbed, why he did not kill the 



252 THE LOGICAL EYE 

the serpent, which is termed the devil, 
whose surname is satan, when he was 
about to enter the garden of Eden, and 
then reconsider and examine the entire 
work of his creation, as given in Genesis. 
With what pretended, unlimited knowl- 
edge and observation attributed to this 
hermaphrodite God, which would enable 
him to observe and discover the slightest 
particle of evil that might be found in 
all his creation, and then and there de- 
stroy every germ of evil which he might 
have found therein, which would have left 
the entire universe which is claimed he 
created, and leave it a pure and holy 
heaven, and everything that pertained 
therein. Now if this God did not, or 



WILL SEE 253 

would not do this, which justice demands, 
it virtually holds this creator responsible 
for every vile and every evil act that 
remains in the universe claimed to be 
created by him. Furthermore, a God 
with the attributes that is claimed for 
him when he created man in his own 
image, he should have possessed man 
with the same attributes as himself, then 
there would not have been the slightest 
possibility of a violation of laws or just 
principles by this created man, then the 
God and the man would be the same in 
every particular. I cannot see any just 
logic for any other conclusion than the 
impossibility of their being a God in the 
creation of the present man. It is prob- 



254 THE L GICAL EYE 

able that after my readers have followed 
me thus far in the investigation of the 
foregoing subjects they would like ans- 
wers to some important questions : 

Question. — Who and what is God? 

Answer. — An idea originated in ig- 
norant heathen times, cultivated into a 
theology. 

Question. — Was there a beginning ? 

Answer. — No ; the universe is eternal, 
without beginning or ending, with matter 
to form and transform by eternal princi- 
ples contained in matter chemically. 

Question. — What objectional features 
to Christianity ? 

Answer. — I object to the Christian 
heaven or hell, and have no desire to go 



WILL SEE 255 

to either, and if it were possible I had 
to go to either, I could not make a 
choice; to go to that heaven and not find 
all my friends would make it a hell to 
me. Jesus was the author of that hell, 
according to that book, and if thei'e be 
any justice in any one going to such a 
hell or place where brimstone burns for- 
ever, he is the only one that should be 
cast therein (for a little while) ; it would 
be like hanging Haman on his own gal- 
lows. Or, in other words, a God that 
is claimed to have power to create all 
and not make all things too good for a 
hell, only deserves such a hell himself 
(for a little while). This Bible God 
I love not, I fear not ; his charac- 



256 THE LOGICAL EYE 

ter as described in that pretended holy 
book is a disgrace to the term God. He 
is a myth, a farce, manufactured out of 
Jewish and other heathenism. 

Question. — What would be your creed? 

Answer. — Morality, truth and justice. 
These three principles contain everything 
that is pure and holy, and I cannot con- 
ceive of anything better to offer the world. 
These principles are sufficient to live and 
die by and depend on in a life beyond 
this, if there be one. And furthermore, 
I wish it to be distinctly understood that 
I do not oppose truth, justice or moral 
acts found in the book known as the 
Bible, but I do most emphatically oppose 
the evil principles and unjust acts that I 



WILL SEE 257 

find recorded in the book, which was en- 
dorsed and practiced by the very God 
this Bible represents. And when those 
societies known as church organizations 
abandon their God and his barbarous 
atonement or plan of salvation, being the 
foundation of the Christian faith, and 
cling to none but moral principles and 
truths, then I am ready to unite my 
efforts in the social good that could be 
obtained. I have already stated 1 do not 
claim any interest in the plan of salva- 
tion offered b}^ this pretended Christ. 



258 THE LOGICAL EYE 

CHAPTER XI. 

IMMORTALITY. 

r^I^OBABLY my readers may wonder 
what my idea is in regard to the 
immortality. I hope for an immortality 
which is all any of us can do, but I 
hope not through Jesus Christ or the God 
of Israel. 

Immortality depends not upon the 
idea of any God. If there be immortality 
it is one of the eternal principles of the 
universe, and if there be a life beyond this 
all the imaginary Gods of all heathendom 
and Christianity can not cheat me out of 
that life. But suppose there is no life be- 
yond, as it is only a supposition to say 



WILL SEE 259 

there is, as any intelligent person logically 
will have to admit it is but a supposi- 
tion. Aside from all that, I can have as 
strong a hope in immortality as Jesus, 
as I know he has not nor never did 
have, any patent on immortality, if he 
were the son of a virgin ; though I do 
not dispute but that he lived at the time 
it is claimed he did. But that does not 
prove his divinity. Now we will suppose 
there is not an immortality. What are we 
going to do about it ? Will hoping and 
believing in a life beyond give us one ? 
Not a bit of it. Then why worry and 
exert ourselves. Why not be reconciled 
to our fate whatever that may be ? 

We cannot lose anything ; we brought 



260 THE L GIGAL EYE 

nothing with us when we came into be- 
ing, neither can we take anything when 
our being ceases. Christians tells us if 
we live not after death it would be a 
horrible idea. Well, I admit it does look 
a little hard, but if it would prove to be 
so, what are you going to do ? I will 
tell you, you will do nothing but just as 
you did before you were here. Paul 
says: "If in this life only we have 
hope, we are of all men most miserable." 
I differ with Mr. Paul from the fact I 
do not see why we should be miserable, 
or make ourselves miserable on that ac- 
count ; it will not make one hair white 
or black, and Mr. Paul need not to have 
troubled himself so much about a life be- 



WILL SEE 261 

yond, which is not prudent or logical. 
! :Panl never entirely recovered from 
that knock down he received on his way 
to Damascus, and his mind must have 
been a little unbalanced from the fact 
that he contradicted himself in many cases. 
We find his story is told in two places 
and do not agree. Acts, chapter 9-7 : 
"And the men that journej'ed with him 
stood speechless, hearing a voice but see- 
ing no man." Acts, chapter 28-9: "And 
they chat were with me, saw indeed the 
light and were afraid, but they heard not 
the voice." So you see Paul did not tell his 
story straight, as he s.iys: "That those 
who were with him heard a voice and 
saw nothing." Again, he says: "They 



262 THE L GICAL EYE 

saw something and heard not a voice.'' 
This spoils Paul's testimony. He could 
not be taken in a court of justice after 
making such contradictory statements about 
his conversion. He became a fanatic on 
religion ; his mind was affected, as can be 
plainly seen by following on through- his 
career. We have thousands of like cases 
at the present time, and the majority 
that are in asylums are caused from re- 
ligious excitement. So we will excuse' 
Mr. Paul and his inspiration. 

I will now return to the subject of 
immortality, or life beyond. I fail to 
see, logically, that it would be such a 
terrible thing to think of, as Christians 
do. They never stop to consider how 



WILL SEE 263 

they have lost all the eternity there was 
before they were born. Now, I repeat it 
again, in all honor to yourselves do stop 
and consider of all that eternity that was 
before you. Have you lost it ? No. You 
never had it to lose. Then if you do 
not get an eternity after death, will you 
lose it ? No ; you did not get any to 
lose, so, logically, you see you have lost 
nothing in regard to eternity. This life 
we have, and we have it here and now, 
but to lose it, or when it leaves us — 
then what? I don't know, neither do 
you ; but I can hope for a life beyond 
with as much assurance as anyone that 
ever lived on the earth — none excepted 
whoever. The Christians seem to think 



264 THE LOGICAL EYE 

they have more assurance than others that 
do not agree with their system of belief. 
The authority they stand on came from 
the same source of all mythologies, which 
all impartial logicians will admit; and 
one of the strongest proofs, in their 
opinion, that they have, is the book of 
revelations. They are welcome to all the 
comfort and consolation that can be got- 
ten out of that bundle of monstrosities in 
regard to a life beyond, which all logi- 
cal readers will see. 

This book of revelations is certainly 
the result of an extreme attack of night- 
mare and if the things contained in that 
account be true, then please give me 
eternal night. I have no desire to exist 



WILL SEE 265 

Id a universe where such things would 
occur as described in that account. My 
dear readers, please stop and think, 
examine this picture as portrayed, see 
the horrible panorama that John describes. 
If we could see it all in one collection 
with all the performance, what a wonder- 
ful menagerie. What an exhibit, most 
horrid to behold. Why, the world's 
fair, the great London, Barnum and 
Forepaugh's all combined would not com- 
pare with that wonderful menagerie. It is 
a good thing that John awoke from that 
sleep or dream, so we can now realize 
what John saw passed away and be as- 
sured that it was all a myth. I think 
we ought to express our regret and sor- 



266 THE L GICAL EYE 

row that anyone had the audacity to 
record such a horrible and diabolical oc- 
currence which, logically, can be nothing 
but a dream. But ah, the effect this 
terrible nightmare has had, and still has 
on thousands of poor weak minds ! and 
even strong minds have succumbed to the 
impressions made by John in that tranced 
state in the Isle of Patmos. It has 
helped fill our asylums; it has made en- 
emies, because they could not agree in 
its meaning; it has engendered strife. It 
was from this awful occurrence of imag- 
inary things that Mrs. Mary Eddy's com- 
parisons of some person which caused a 
libel and damage suit that was pending 
in the courts. In truth, the recording of 



WILL SEE 267 

that pretended revelation is a reproach 
on our universe. Logicians and all liberal 
thinkers believe that by our constant 
efforts in showing forth the absurdity of 
the Christian teaching, that the church 
will eventually drop its theological dog- 
mas and keep pace with progress and 
evolution. 

From the signs of the times we feel 
greatly encouraged, and from the very 
fact that the press is today with us, and 
the most popular journals now publish 
our articles, and all liberal ideas that the 
clergy make in favor of the liberty of 
thought, which the press would not have 
dared to do fifty years ago. 

But to illustrate our advance, I will 



268 THE LOGICAL EYE 

refer to two cases of the clergy. While 
I could give many more, it is not neces- 
sary to those who can see with a Logi- 
cal Eye. First, I offer articles by Dr. 
Hillis, as the press gave them: 

"The Rev. Newell Dwight Hillis, of 
Plymouth church, Brooklyn, preached yes- 
terday morning in his old pulpit at 
Central church, Central music hall, on 
the difficulties and obstacles met by the 
modern preacher. The hall was packed 
to the walls and many were turned 
away. He said in part : 

" 'The pulpit is waning in its in- 
fluence. We have but to cite a few in- 
instances to show that it is losing its grip 
on the people. Newspapers and magazines 



WILL SEE 269 

and authors are taking the place of 
preachers.' 

'' Dr. Hillis cited instances of many 
churches, which, he said, a few years ago 
had been prosperous, but were now de- 
serted by the gospel and converted to 
uses of commerce. He went on : 

*'*But there was never a time when 
the gospel was more needed in certain 
classes. Today there are 13,000,000 chil- 
dren in the United States who never 
crossed the doorstep of a church of 
Christ, catholic or protestant. 

"'But the people are becoming so 
far advanced in thought that today they 
do not need the guidance they once de- 
manded. In a hundred years lawyers 



270 THE L GICAL EYE 

will be driven out of business, because 
people are learning to avoid legal com- 
plications. In fifty years doctors will be 
driven out of practice, because people are 
learning more and more to observe the 
rules of health. It is just the same way 
with preachers. Men are becoming auto- 
matic gospels. They carry with them the 
great laws of Christianity and observe 
them without the aid of the minister. I 
know of many men out of the church, 
who never attend church services, who 
are models of the Christian gospels and 
who are the best men in their com- 
munities." ' 



WILL SEE 271 

{Chicago Times- Herald, March 26, 1900.] 

Key. Newell Dwight Hillis on the 
Doctrine of Damnation. 

''Today one of our greatest denomi- 
natioDs still includes the awful statement 
in its confession of faith, saying that cer- 
tain men and angels are foreordained to 
everlasting dearth, being ' particularly and 
unchangeably designed, and their number 
is so certain and definite that it cannot 
be either increased or diminished.' 

'' Every young man who enters the 
Presbyterian church has to solemnly swear 
to believe and teach this frightful view. 
It would seem that if men believed it 
reason would be shaken to its foundation. 
It would seem as if a man would prefer 



272 THE L GICAL EYE 

to be burned at the stake rather than 
hold and charge such infinite cruelty upon 
the all- merciful and all-loying God. 

*' What, read the story of Christ's life 
— love, suffering and death — and then 
charge God 'particularly and unchange- 
ably designing' the majority of his chil- 
dren to eternal torment ? 

'* I would rather shake my fist in the 
face of the eternal and fling every vile 
epithet toward the stainless throne, where 
eternal mercy sits with the world's aton- 
ing Savior than lift my hand with that 
creed toward God's throne and affirm that 
I taught or believed it. 

*' For the man who does believe that 
hideous doctrine the hour of judgment 



WILL SEE 273 

has already come. His sun is already 
darkened ; his moon is turned to blood ; his 
stars have refused to give their light." 

I am glad to learn that such popular 
men as the Rev. Hillis can see how il- 
logical the doctrine of foreordination is, 
though it is taught in plain language by 
Jesus and his disciples and apostles. Why 
does he condemn a doctrine and then try 
to justify the authors of the doctrine 
— who is Jesus and his God? We find 
this in no other mythology. 

Why does not Dr. Hillis be fair and 
come out from under the whole curse of 
theology as Ingersoll and others have 
done ? We are 'those who dare to rea- 
son, and dare to] speak. It is very ap- 



274 JHE LOGICAL EYE 

parent that Dr. Hillis' remarks are con- 
tradictory in those articles, and I am in- 
clined to think he is one who dares not 
speak the whole sentiment of his reason- 
ing faculty. 

Next I offer is an article by the 
Rev. Sam Jones: 

{Chicago Inter Ocean, March 20, 1900.] 

"Mr. Sheldon has written several 
books on Christian socialism after the 
kindergarten style. ' Coin ' Harvey wrote 
'Coin's Financial School,' started a news- 
paper and was dumped overboard. What 
will become of Mr. Sheldon? He leads 
the procession in his line, running a 
newspaper as Jesus would. But I have 
as much right to interpret the mind of 



WILL SEE 275 

Christ and to discern the mental process 
of Christ as Mr. Sheldon. In the first 
place, I don't believe Christ would run 
a newspaper, and it is a sin for any- 
body to try and run a newspaper ' like 
Christ would run one,' when he don't 
know anything about it. I do not be- 
lieve it is wicked for Sheldon to try to 
run a newspaper as he thinks Jesus 
would, but when the job is finished, and 
he says he did run it as Christ would, 
then he is a sinner. He does not endorse 
the entire paper, except as to articles 
over his own signature. The devil him- 
self could make the same announcement. 
*'I am glad he made the experiment. 
I have not gotten so old myself that I 



276 THE L QICAL EYE 

do not like new things. I have seen two 
copies, and I picked up the paper with 
superstitious awe ; but I did not examine 
it long till I felt somewhat as though one 
of our religious weeklies was trying the 
experiment of daily issues. The truth is 
I don't know a man on earth who can 
run himself as Jesus teaches^ much less 
one who is able to jump into a new 
field for just one week, and such a field 
as the daily newspaper — a field where 
the devil has had the ri^ht of way so 
long that the whole business is run like 
he wants it run. I think no man can do 
it, would repudiate a dream suggesting 
such a thing, and attribute its origin to 
too3 much pork 1 had eaten for supper. 



WILL SEE 277 

"That Sheldon's efforts will have any 
influence in spreading Christianity, we're 
left to surmise. Christianity is difficult 
to spread these days. I have been 
preaching to 8,000 people every night for 
two weeks, and might as well try to 
grow pineapples and bananas in Alaska as 
to convert them. Christianity has been 
contracting on us for the last year or 
two, for statistics tell us we have less 
numerical strength than a year ago. If 
all the preachers in this country cannot 
spread Christianity, with all the churches 
behind them, I doubt if the Topeka 
Capitol, edited by Mr. Sheldon, can make 
much headway in spreading that doctrine 
or any other similar character." 



278 THE L GICAL EYE 

From these articles my readers may 
get some idea of this present situation, 
though it may take as many centuries to 
get rid of the Christian mythology as it 
did to raise it where it was in the latter 
part of the nineteenth century of its era. 
It got a blow that it never will recover 
from. And who struck that most fatal 
blow ? Col. R. G. Ingersoll, who was 
the right man in the right place, at the 
right time, when Christianity had at its 
command all the brainy men it needed, 
all the money necessary to operate, yet, 
when this mighty man Ingersoll, that none 
will compare with, who dared to stand up- 
on the rostrum and hold Christianity out 
before the gaze of the intelligent, thought- 



WILL SEE 279 

fal citizens of this independent republic 
that has not the word God in its consti- 
tution, shaking it and turning it over and 
over in such a manner that his audiences 
saw the weak points and spots in the 
whole Christian structure. And there is 
no fair and unprejudiced person but can 
say that Ingersoll was not crowned with 
success, and his memory will go down 
through the centuries as Christianity may 
slowly fade. Ingersoll believed in a 
religion of humanity. He lived head 
and foot above reproach. His life was 
an example that none could make a mis- 
take to follovr. Not being clothed in 
mysteries as was the life of Jesus, he 
dared to utter his honest thoughts. He 



280 THE L GICAL EYE 

was just in all his dealing, he was a 
philanthropist in every sense of the word. 
He despised slavery of either mind or 
body. He pitied ignorance and gave all 
his spare time to slacken its grip on hu- 
manity. His pen even spoke the 
honest intent of his heart. He loved his 
friends, especially those most dear to him, 
and he was rewarded in return. He 
made home the most sacred spot on earth 
to himself and those concerned. His 
heart was pure and his head was clear. 
He was master of his position. His 
arguments have never fairly and logically 
been answered, though many have 
made the attempt and failed. Even 
the grand old man of England 



WILL SEE 281 

made a total failure when he tackled 
IngersoU on theology. But when Inger- 
soll got through with him on that sub- 
ject, he didn't care to make another at- 
tempt to defend his theology, although 
we admit that Gladstone was one of the 
greatest statesman of his time. In short, 
Ingersoll practiced the religion he taught 
which was more than Jesus did, as I have 
proven by the gospels. He showed no 
uneasiness in regard to the end, yet the 
condition of his health was such as to 
warn him that the end might come at 
any moment, which it did. 

Ingersoll 's opponents in belief is with- 
out the slightest evidence or probability 
of -his recanting from his belief, so it is 



282 TEE L O GICAL EYE 

beyond the power of the church to 
slander him as they did Thomas Paine. 
He died as he had lived, as thousands of 
others have done (it's a mistaken idea 
that all infidels recant), and his friends 
had nothing to regret on the account of 
his belief. Their sorrow was that they 
lost a dear companion, father and friend. 
Had Ingersoll been on the rostrum de- 
livering one of his eloquent lectures at 
the time he was stricken in death, the 
clergy would have had an opportunity to 
tell their friends and congregations that 
"it was a judgment sent upon him from 
God." But when a minister of the gos- 
pel drops dead in the pulpit as we have 
often read from the papers that many 



WILL SEE 283 

do, there is nothing said about the judg- 
ment of God. In Moody's case when he 
was stricken in the midst of a revival in 
Kansas City he was compelled to return 
home to die, and let sinners who might 
have been converted to take their chances 
to be saved. There is nothing said about 
a judgment in the case of Moody. 1 
close this chapter with : Ever hail to the 
grand old man of America, who is none 
other than Col. R. G. Ingersoll. 



284 THE L QICAL EYE 



CHAPTER XII. 

CONCLUSION. 

TN consequence of all this and my unal- 
terable convictions, I will make a re- 
quest of my friends which refers to the 
manner of my burial. When my eyes 
are closed in the sleep that knows no 
waking and to lay me in my last rest- 
ing place, I desire my head to be placed 
toward the north, instead of the west, 
which is a custom established by the 
Christians, who believed in the resurrec- 
tion of their Christ, who, they hope, will 
• appear in the east, and the position in 
which his followers are placed will enable 
them to rise with their gaze in that 



WILL SEE 285 

direction of the horizon. I do not wish 
to be buried according: to this custom. 
I expect my body to retain that position 
in which it is placed, unless disturbed by 
some natural cause. 

I, Jehu Barr, author of this work, 
was born in the state of Ohio, May 
29th, in the Sixtieth year of the Ameri- 
can Independence. 

My reason for giving these dates is, 
that I regard the birth of the American 
Republic more sacred than the birth of 
a man who is claimed to be a God 
manifest in the flesh. Therefore, I pre- 
fer to have the period of my birth and 
death date from the era of the American 
Independence. 



286 THE L O OICAL EYE 



While beauty and youth are in their full prime, 
Not folly and fashion affect our whole time, 
Or let not the phantom our wishes engage, 
But live so in youth that we blush not in age. 

Then when I the burden of life shall have borne, 
And death with its sickle will cut the ripe corn, 
I resign to my fate, without murmur or sigh, 
I'll bless the kind summons and lie down and die. 



The End. 




THE AUTHOR AT THE AGE OF 60. 



APPENDIX 289 



APPENDIX 



An Extract From the Wetmore-Hickok 

Discussion. 
/VAANY, many years ago — 1851-2 — I 
was a student in the law office of 
that world- renowned '* Old War Horse," 
Joshua R. Giddings, of Ohio, who was 
in the senate twenty-three successive years. 
My first case was my alpha and omega, 
*'so we won't count this in." The la- 
mented James A. Garfield and the father 
of W. D. Howells, the novelist, were 
also interested. I became convinced that 
there was no equity in law, and dropped 
it for my present profession. Now, if I 



290 APPENDIX 

plead my own case in this instance, 
probaly some will reiterate the old say- 
ing about "a fool for a client." The 
principal object of my first article was to 
call attention to the necessity of repealing 
all laws that exempt churches and church 
property from taxation, intimating to 
church - goers methods that might be 
adopted whereby their philanthropy might 
be publicly demonstrated. The paucity of 
arguments elicited, however, do not call 
for any extended controversy. No one 
seems inclined to discuss the practical and 
philanthropic part of my paper whereby 
humanity might be benefited. No one 
admits the extravagance in the expendi- 
ture of millions upon millions of dollars 



APPENDIX 291 



upon churches, which the true Christian 
should use for the relief of the poor, 
worthy and starving portion of the human 
race. They are all ready, however, to 
quote scripture and combat the mythical 
part to which I referred, " By their 
works ye shall know them." How is a 
Christian to be known, if not by his 
character, his integrity, hi shonesty and 
righteousness. Rev. Hickok calls me a — 
well, no, he did not say I was a liar, but 
said I was not truthful and was unjust 
when I said there were more than 41,000 
Christians in our states prisons, peniten- 
tiaries, lockups and jails, and more than 
1,000 ministers, priests and preachers 
confined in prisons during ten years. 



292 APPENDIX 

Now, my dear reverend sir, I drew it 
very mildly in that article, for I did not 
care to hurt your feelings, but the truth 
of that, instead of 1,000 of that class of 
gentlemen the statistics show that there 
were 2,008 in a period of seven years 
instead of ten. Your only argument is 
that these men were pseudo-Christians ; 
that "they might or might not have 
been church members, but they were not 
Christians." Would it not sound better 
and nearer the truth to say they made 
mistakes, just as everybody does? Sup- 
posing that some eminent landscape artist, 
by accident or mistake, daubed and spoiled 
a very valuable picture. Would he not 
be an artist still? Supposing that some 



APPENDIX 293 

renowned and skillful surgeon should, by 
mistake, in a very delicate operation on 
the brain, kill his patient, would he not 
still be a surgeon? Supposing that a 
world-renowned and eminent lawyer, by 
some inadvertence, accident or mistake, 
lost a case that was of great importance 
to the nation, who would say he was not 
a lawyer still ? 

The same argument applies to chris- 
tians, whether they be preachers or lay- 
men, for they are just as liable to acci- 
dents and mistakes as any class of peo- 
ple on earth. And sometimes I think 
they are particularly unfortunate. Now, 
what constitutes a christian ? You are 
familiar with the Nazarene story, even 



294 APPENDIX 

from protoplasmic life, and I have no 
disposition to narrate it. We are told 
if we believe that story Ave are chris- 
tians ; if not, we are infidels and will be 
damned. I am frank to say that I had 
rather be damned with the infidels than 
to say I believe it. Many say they do, 
because it makes them popular, for it is 
a popular fad. When agnosticism be- 
comes popular — and it is sure to follow 
— there will be a greater rush of the 
elite than has ever been demonstrated in 
Christianity, because it is rational — no 
myth or miracle coniiected with it. And 
yet, it seems the most mysterious and 
absurd dogmas are most readily pretended, 
preached and practiced. 



APPENDIX 295 

It should be conceded, however, with- 
out any very j2:reat stretch of the imagi- 
nation, that each may be perfectly con- 
scientious in their convictions and should 
be permitted to prevail without serious 
impugning notions. Ambiguous expres- 
sions, frequently repeated by ministers, 
finally become positive facts in their 
minds. For instance. Rev. Hickok seems 
perfectly positive that he is personally 
acquainted with the "higher power" to 
whom he prays. Now, my dear brother, 
use your own thinking powers for a mo- 
ment ; reason, be honest and acknowledge 
that you don't know what you "know," 
or think you know. 

"It is an impossibility for any man 



296 APPENDIX 

to know God. He never saw him, 
touched him, heard him, tasted or smelt 
him." — Huxley. 

It is simply another christian mis- 
take. It is imagination or a delusion, 
and not knowledge ; hence you are an ag- 
nostic and still probably a christian. 

Rev. Dr. Lyman Abbott says : ''There 
is no reason why agnostics should not 
enter the kingdom of heaven." This 
statement; is corroborated by Revs. Frances 
Poulson Upham, North Lloyd, MacArthur, 
Savage, Heber Newton and hosts of other 
distinguished divines. 

What strange ideas some people have 
of agnostics, liberals, freethinkers, atheists 
or infidels. Some one criticising my 



APPENDIX 297 

former paper says: "He is not an in- 
fidel, for he is no fool." Such an ex- 
pression shows a limited education, if not 
a warped intellect. Epithets and innuen- 
does are never arguments. The debt of 
gratitude that this civilized, enlightened and 
scientific world owes to the infidels can 
never be paid. They have done more for 
humanity, more for the prosperity of 
every race, move for the welfare and 
happiness, culture and civilization of the 
entire world than all the religions com- 
bined. 

My critic should not forget that infi- 
dels or liberals are classed auioug the 
most distinguished, honored, learned, sci- 
entific teachers, historians and investigators 



298 . APPENDIX 

the world has ever produced. It is only 
necessary to mention the names of some 
of those great thinkers to thrill the soul 
with admiration of every lover of human- 
ity for education, freedom, liberty and 
science. Among those world - renowned 
teachers we might mention the names of 
Voltaire, Galen, Spinoza, Copernicus, Gal- 
ileo, Bruno, Hypatia, Descartes, Rosseau, 
Gibbon, Volney, Newton, Seibuitz, Burns, 
Byron, Shelley, Goethe, Thomas Paine^ 
our own Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jef- 
ferson, George Washington, Charles Sum- 
ner and Abraham Lincoln. 

Students are familiar with those who 
have moved the world by their great dis- 
coveries, by their scientific attainments 



APPENDIX 299 

and profound research. We might men- 
tion Humboldt, Haeckle, Huxley, Tyndall, 
Darwin, Mill and Spencer, with hosts of 
others less distinguished, who are striving 
to enlighten the world in the science of 
evolution. Who did more for human 
liberty than Voltaire, Spinoza and Paine ? 
Who did more to enlighten the world and 
solar planetary science than Copernicus, 
Galileo and Newton ? And yet ignorant 
Christians defame their names because they 
did not believe that Jesus was the eternal 
son of God. Like Servitus, they prefer- 
red to say that he was the son of an 
eternal God. Many of the above were mur- 
dered in cold blood by Christians ; some 
were imprisoned for years, and Bruno- 



500 APPENDIX 

like, Servitus was burned at the stake. 
Still, science has slowly progressed in 
spite of the great barrier, Christianity ; 
which has been the great obstacle to scien- 
tific progress the world has had to con- 
tend with. Sister Armstrong, one of my 
critics, thinks that ''there is no knowl- 
edge, education light or truth in the world 
but the love of Christ ; all else is ig- 
norance." If that be true, what could 
have been the condition of humanity be- 
fore Christ or before the Dark Ages, 
which the Christians produced ? Or what 
is the condition of countries that never 
heard of Jesus ? The above is hardly a 
fin de siecle or up-to-date-criticism. Do 
not forget, my dear Christian friend, that 



APPENDIX 301 

we have the histories of not less than 
sixteen crucified Saviours, with all of 
whom there is connected in some way the 
same old mythological story of an im- 
mortal father, a virgin mother, the star 
in the east, the manger and the shepherd 
episode. 

The histories of Apollonius and Plato 
are essentially the same as that of Jesus. 
Four hundred years before Christ Plato 
was said to have been born of a virgin 
named Perictione, who had suffered an 
immaculate conception at the touch of the 
god Apollo. ''His religion was believed 
and taught at the time of Christ," says 
Ladd. Buddha is said to have been born 
of a virgin amid great miracles. Space 



302 APPENDIX 

will not admit of a detailed account of 
the various Messiahs whose lives were 
very interesting. The truth is that every 
nation has its God, its bible or book, 
and its subjects are taught the peculiar 
religion of each country. Persia had its 
Zoraster, China its Confucius, Greece its 
Socrates, Mexico its Quetzubcotal, Rome 
its Marcus Aurelius, Arabia its Mo- 
hammed, India its Buddha and Palestine 
its Jesus. Doubtless if we had been 
born in Arabia we would have believed 
in Mohammedanism ; in India we would 
have been Buddhists, etc., etc. The his- 
tories of these national representatives, 
these gods or men, are all very similar. 
While living, each was persecuted, and 



APPENDIX 303 

after death they were overladen with mar- 
velous tales. Every one of them was 
considered a prophet and noble character, 
and each profoundly influenced ethical life, 
yet all were martyred for the cause of 
humanity. If but one of these religions 
is right the others are all wrong. Some 
influence is responsible. What is it ? 

Now, my dear judge, adieu, "but not 
good-by," in the interest of truth and a 
"higher criticism." 

Dr. S. W. Wetmore. 
Buffalo, February 3, 1898. 



304 APPENDIX 



STATISTICS ON CRIME. 

To the Editor : In preachiog re- 
cently of ''The Agnostic's Uncrowned 
King, Robert G. Ingersoll," the Rev. 
Frank DeWitt Talmage, D. D., admits 
having himself "traveled hundreds of 
miles to sit at his feet when he delivered 
his great eulogy before the New York 
legislature upon Roscoe Conkling, the eu- 
logizer proving himself greater than the 
eulogized," admits his wonderful genius, 
matchless eloquence, remarkable magnet- 
ism, and powerful influence over all his 
hearers and readers ; admits his devotion 
to family, sympathy for the oppressed, 
generosity to the poor, and his sacrificing 



APPENDIX 305 



''the Illinois Governorship, United States 
Senatorship, and Presidency," to his honest 
convictions on religion, yet inconsistently 
charges him with "developing more lib- 
ertines, murderers, jailbirds, and unhappy 
homes than any man who ever lived," 
and with "even now destroying 10,000 
souls daily." 

Of 44,034 inmates of sixty-six Amer- 
ican prisons in 1885, there were but one 
avowed and two so-called infidels. Recent 
Canadian statistics gave their prison in- 
mates as 1,902 christians, and but eight 
freethinkers. French prisons contained 
recently 19,710 inmates, among which 
there was not a single atheist. Do not 



306 APPENDIX 

these facts refute Dr. Talmage's charges ? 
Should not our ministers have some re- 
spect for facts if they desire to com- 
mand the confidence and respect of in- 
telligent people ? Does the vicarious 
atonement doctrine improve morals when 
every murderer swings from the scaffold 
directly into heaven ? 

D. Webster Groh. 



APPENDIX 307 



\_London Dispatch, April 26, 1896.'] 

T^HE religious press pathetically com- 
ments on the falling off in Methodism. 
The Wesleyan returns, just published, re- 
veals that during the past year there has 
been a decrease in the membership of 
2,275. The Christian World asks how it 
is that 2,000 ministers assisted by an 
army of zealous workers have failed to 
add a single member to the church, 
though the Wesleyan Sunday school have 
over a million scholars. The author's 
answer is, that as these children mature, 
they depart, because they learn how to 
look at matters logically, and deliberate 
scientifically. 



308 APPENDIX 



[Chicago Journal, Dec. 30, 1899.] 

pvR. CHARLES H. PARKHURST, in 

his discourse at New York last Sunday 
morning, referred to the connection of war 
with Christianity. "If you think there 
are places in the world where Christian- 
ity has sprung up as an aftergrowth of 
the militar}'- conquest — undoubtedly — that 
does not alter anything, war is war 
nevertheless. It does not relieve filthy 
soil that flowers grow out of it. God is 
all the time doing that thing. It was 
indispensible to our Lord's mission that 
Judas should betray him, but that didn't 
help Judas any. 

"Or, you may say, that the powder 



APPENDIX 309 

and shot method of extending civilization 
is more feasible, works with greater 
promptness. I do not dispute that. I 
am not here to assert that Christianity 
is, on the whole, feasible. Thousands of 
ministers have practically been confessing 
to the world these last twelve monlhs 
that Christ's way of saving the world will 
not work, and that when Paul said that 
the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, 
he stated a principle he would have re- 
canted if he had lived longer and known 
more. Perhaps they are right. I should 
be sorry to have to conclude that the 
gospel is inadequate without gunpowder 
to support it, and when I do conclude thus 
I shall stop preaching out of respect — 



310 APPENDIX 

at least I shall stop calling myself a 
preacher of the gospel." 

NoTB.— If the author of this could be living at the 
end of the twentieth century he would in all probability be 
an intelligent, logical deliberator in progress 



APPENDIX 311 

Self - Contradictions of the Bible — 

Theological Doctrines. 

I. 

God is Satisfied with His Works. 

And God saw everything that he had 
made, and behold it was very good. 
(Gen. i, 31). 

God is Dissatisfied with His Works, 

And it repented the Lord that he 
had made man on the earth, and it 
grieved him at his heart. (Gen. vi, 6). 

n. 

God Dwells in Chosen Temples. 

And the Lord appeared to Solomon 

by night, and said unto him : I have 

heard thy prayer, and have chosen this 

place to myself for a house of sacrifice. 



5 12 APPENDIX 

For now have I chosen and sanctified 
this house, that my name may be there 
forever ; and mine eyes and my heart 
shall be there perpetually. (2 Chr. vii, 
12, 16). 

God Dwells Not in Temples. 
Howbeit the Most High dwelleth not 
in temples made with hands. (Acts vii, 48). 
III. 
God Dwells in Light. 
Dwelling in the light which no man 
can approach unto. (1 Tim. vi, 16). 
God Dwells in Darkness. 
The Lord said that he would dwell 
in the thick darkness. (1 Kings viii, 12.) 
He made darkness his secret place. 
(Ps. xviii, 11). 



APPENDIX 313 

Clouds and darkness are round about 
him. (Ps. xcvii, 2). 

IV. 
God is Seen and Heard. 

And I will take away my hand, and 
thou shalt see my back parts. (Ex. 
xxxiii, 23). 

And the Lord spake unto Moses face 
to face, as a man speaketh unto his 
friend. (Ex. xxxiii, 11). 

And the Lord called unto Adam, and 
said unto him, Where art thou? And he 
said, I heard thy voice in the garden, 
and I was afraid. (Gen. iii, 9, 10). 

For I have seen God face to face, 
and my life is preserved. (Gen. xxxii, 
30). 



314 APPENDIX 

In the year that King Uzziah died, 
I saw, also, the Lord sitting upon a 
throne, high and lifted up. (Is. vi, 1). 

Then went up Moses and Aaron, Na- 
dab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders 
of Israel. And they saw the God of 
Israel. * * * They saw God, and did 
eat and drink. (Ex. xxiv, 9, 10, 11). 
God is Invisible and Cannot he Heard. 

No man hath seen God at any time. 
(John i, 18). 

Ye hath neither heard his voice at 
any time, nor seen his shape. (John v, 
37). 

And he said, thou canst not see my 
face ; for there shall no man see me and 
live. (Ex. xxxiii, 20). 



APPENDIX 315 

Whom no man hath seen nor can 
see. (1 Tim. vi, 16). 

God is Tired and Rests. 

For in six days the Lord made 
heaven and earth, and on the seventh day 
he rested and was refreshed. (Ex. xxxi, 
17). 

1 am weary with repenting. (Jer. 
XV, 6). 

Thou hast wearied me with thine in- 
iquities. (Is. xliii, 24). 

God is Never Tired and Never Rests. 

Hast thou not heard that the erer- 
lasting God, the Lord, the Creator of 
the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither 
is weary. (Is. xl, 28). 



316 APPENDIX 

VI. 

Qod is Omnipresent^ Sees and Knows all 
Things. 

The eyes of the Lord are in every 
place. (Prov. xv, 3). 

Whither shall I flee from thy pres- 
ence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art 
there ; If I naake my bed in hell, behold 
thou are there. If I take the wings of 
the morning, and dwell in the uttermost 
parts of the sea, even there shall thy 
hand lead me, and thy right hand shall 
hold me. (Ps. cxxxix, Y-10). 

There is no darkness nor shadow of 
death where the workers of iniquity may 
hide themselves. For his eyes are upon 
the ways of man, and he seeth all his 
goings. (Job, xxxiv, 22, 21). 



APPENDIX 317 

God is Not Omnipresent^ Neither Sees or 
Knows all Things. 

And the Lord came down to see the 
city and the tower. (Gen. xi, 5). 

And the Lord said, because the cry 
of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and 
because their sin is very grievous, I will 
go down now and see whether they have 
done altogether according to the cry of 
it, which is come unto me ; and, if not, 
I will know. (Gen. xviii, 20, 21). 

And Adam and his wife hid them- 
selves from the presence of the Lord God, 
amongst the trees of the garden. (Gen. 
iii, 8). 



318 APPENDIX 

VII. 

God Knows the Hearts of Men, 

Thou, Lord, which knowest the hearts 
of all men. (Acts i, 24). 

Thou knowest my down-sitting and 
mine uprising ; thou understandest my 
thoughts afar off. Thou compassest my 
path and my lying down, and art ac- 
quainted with all my ways. (Ps. cxxxxi, 
2, 3). 

For he knoweth the secrets of the 
heart. (Ps. xliv, 21). 
God Tries Men to Find Out What is in 
Their Hea/rts. 

The Lord, your God, proveth you, to 
know whether ye love the Lord your 
God, with all your heart and with all 



APPENDIX 319 

your heart and all your soul. (Deut. xiii, 3). 

The Lord thy God led thee these 
forty years in the wilderness, to humble 
thee and to prove thee, to know what 
was in thy heart. (Deut. viii, 2). 

For now I know that thou fearest 
God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy 
son, thine only son, from me. (Gen. 
xxii, 12). 

VIII. 
God is All-Powerful. 

Behold, I am the Lord, the God of 
all flesh ; is there anything too hard for 
me ? * * * There is nothing too hard 
for thee. (Jer. xxxii, 27, 17). 

With God all things are possible. 
(Mat. xix, 26). 



320 APPENDIX 

God is Wot AU-Powerful. 

And the Lord was with Judah, and 
he drove out the inhabitants of the 
mountain ; but could not drive out the 
inhabitants o f the valley, because they 
had chariots of iron. (Judges i, 19.) 
IX. 
God is Unchangeable. 

With whom is no variableness, neither 
shadow of turning. (James i, 17.) 

For I am the Lord ; I change not. 
(Mai. iii, 6). 

I, the Lord, have spoken it ; it shall 
come to pass, and I will do it. I will 
not go back, neither will I spare, neither 
will I repent. (Ezekiel xxiv, 14). 

God is not a man that he should lie, 



APPENDIX 321 

neither the son of man that he should 
repent. (Num. xxiii, 19). 

God is Changeable. 

And it repented the Lord that he 
had made man on the earth, and it 
grieved him at his heart. (Gen. vi, 6). 

And God saw their works, that they 
turned from their evil way ; and God re- 
pented of the evil that he had said that 
he would do unto them, and he did it not. 
(Jonah iii, 10). 

Wherefore the Lord God of Israel 
saith, I said, indeed, that thy house, and 
the house of thy father should walk be- 
fore me forever ; but now the Lord saith, 
Be it far from me. * * * Behold, the 
days come that I will cut off thine arm. 



322 APPENDIX 

and the arm of thy father's house. (1 
Sam. ii, 30, 31). 

In those days was Hezekiah sick unto 
death. And the prophet Isaiah, the son 
of Amoz, came to him, and said unto 
him. Thus saith the Lord, Set thy house 
in order ; for thou shalt die, and not 
live. * * * And it came to pass afore 
Isaiah was gone out into the middle 
court, that the word of the Lord came 
unto him, saying. Turn again and tell 
Hezekiah, the captain of my people, Thus 
saith the Lord, * * * j have heard 
thy prayer, * * * and I will add un- 
to thy days fifteen years. (2 Kings xx, 
1, 4, 5, 6). 

And the Lord said unto Moses, De- 



APPENDIX 323 

part and go up hence, thou and the 
people. * * * for I will not go up 
in the midst of thee/ * * * ^nd the 
Lord said unto Moses, I will do this 
thing, also, that thou hast spoken. * * 
* My presence sJiall go with thee, and 
I will give thee rest. (Ex. xxxiii, 1, 3, 
17, 14). 

X. 
God is Just and Impartial. 

The Lord is upright, * * * and 
there is no unrighteousness in him. (Ps. 
xcii, 15). 

Shall not the Judge of all the earth 
do right? (Gen. xviii, 25). 

A God of truth, and without ini- 
quity, just and right is he. (Deut. xxxii, 4). 



324 APPENDIX 

There is no respect of persons with 
God. (Kom. ii, 11). 

Ye say the way of the Lord is not 
equal. Hear now, O house of Israel ; is 
not my way equal? (Ezek. xviii, 25). 

He doth execute the judgment of the 
fatherless and widow, and loveth the 
stranger, in giving him food and rai- 
ment. Love ye, therefore, the stranger. 
(Deut. X, 18, 19). 

God is Unjust and Partial. 

Cursed be Canaan ; a servant of servants 
shall he be unto his brethren. (Gen.ix, 25). 

For I, the Lord thy God, am a 
jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the 
fathers upon the children unto the third 
and fourth generation. (Ex. xx, 5). 



APPENDIX 325 

For the children being not yet born, 
neither having done any good or evil, 
that the purpose of God, according to 
election, might stand, * * it was said unto 
her. The elder shall serve the younger. 
As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but 
Esau have I hated. (Rom. ix, 11, 12, 13.) 

For whosoever hath, to him shall be 
given, and he shall have more abundance; 
but whosoever hath not, from him shall 
be taken away even that he hath. (Matt, 
xiii, 12). 

Ye shall not eat of anything that 
dieth of itself ; thou shalt give it unto 
the stranger that is in thy gates, that he 
may eat it; or thou mayest sell it unto 
an alien. (Deut. xiv, 21). 



326 APPENDIX 

And David spoke unto the Lord when 
he saw the angel that smote the people, 
and said, Lo, I have sinned, and I have 
done wickedly ; bat these sheep, what 
have they done ? (2 Sam. xxiv, 17). 
XI. 

God is Not the Author of Evil. 

The law of the Lord is perfect. * 

* * The statutes of the Lord are right. 

* * * The commandment of the Lord 
is pure. (Ps. xix, 7, 8). 

God is not the author of confusion. 
(1 Cor. xiv, 33). 

A God of truth and without iniquity, 
just and right is he. (Deut. xxxii, 4). 

For God cannot be tempted with evil, 
neither tempteth he any man. (James i, 13). 



APPENDIX 327 

God is the Author of Evil. 

Out of the mouth of the Most High 

proceedeth not evil but good. (Lam. iii, 38). 

Thus saith the Lord, Behold I frame 

evil against you and devise a device 

against you. (Jer. xviii, 11). 

I make peace and create evil. I, the 
Lord, do all these things. (Is. xlv, 7). 

Shall there be evil in a cily, and the 
Lord hath not done it? (Amos iii, 6). 

Therefore I gave them also statutes 
that were not good, and judgments where- 
by they should not live. (Ezek. xx, 25). 
XII. 
God Gvves Freely to Those Who Ash. 
If any of you lack wisdom, let him 
of God, that giveth to all men 



328 APPENDIX 

liberally and upbraideth not, and it shall 
be given him. (James i, 6). 

For everyone that asketh receiveth, 
and he that seeketh findeth. (Luke xi, 
10). 

God Withholds His Blessings and Pre- 
vents Their Reception. 

He hath blind their eyes and hard- 
ened their heart that they should not see 
with their eyes, nor understand with their 
heart, and be converted, and I should 
heal them. (John xii, 40). 

For it was of the Lord to harden 
their hearts, that they should come against 
Israel in battle, that he might destroy 
them utterly, and that they might have 
no favor. (Josh, xi, 20). 



APPENDIX 329 



AUTHOR'S NOTE. 
r>iEAR READERS, does not logical de- 
liberation make it clear to the log- 
ical eye that there are positive contradictions 
in this pretended holy book ? And I 
stand in the affirmative that this preten- 
tious God and the Christ (if they were 
superhuman) stand branded with fraud 
and deception on humanity in allowing 
this bible of contradictions to be pub- 
lished by the millions and circulated 
throughout the land for hundreds of years, 
causing dissension, strife, bloodshed and 
calamity. 

Then, if you say I pull down this 
conglomerated theology, what would I 



330 APPENDIX 

build with ? The Relig-ion of Humani- 
tarianism, with a Plain Creed, MORAL- 
ITY, TRUTH AND JUSTICE, which contain 
all that is holy and sacred to the ethical 
cultured, and the higher intellect, as the 
Logical Eye will see. (So mote it be). 

Dr. J. BARR. 



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